The Gnostics and Their Remains

Footnotes
82:* "But the Libyans held that Iarbas was the first-born of men; he who, rising up out of their droughty plains, first gathered the sweet dates of Jove. And even in our day, the Nile fattening the mud of Egypt, p. 83 and giving life to things clothed with flesh, through his moist heat breeds living creatures. The Assyrians pretend that the First Man arose in their country, Oannes, the eater of fish; but the Chaldeans say he was Adam."

84:* Μέλας has both these meanings.

85:* The "Seed of the World" in the Basilidan system, as already explained (p. 73).

86:* Meaning the Body, in which the Inner Man imprisoned has lost all recollection of leis primal source.

87:* The Basilidan "Boundary Spirit," or Holy Ghost (p. 76).

88:* Ildabaoth, the God of Fire.

89:* A valuable notice of the type under which the Cabiri were represented in this the most venerated of all the Grecian sanctuaries. It is curiously illustrated by Ficoroni's bronze group, figured in his "Memorie di Labico," and given to the Kircherian Museum. A female, half-draped in a star-spangled robe, rests her hands on the shoulders of twin youths, similarly arrecti, with the ears and standing-up hair of fauns, one holds a horn, the other the handle of a vase. The base is inscribed in very archaic letters--

DINDIA MAGOLNIA FIEA DEDIT NOVIOS PLAVTIOS MED ROMAI FECID

where it will be seen that Dindia uses the metronymic after the Etruscan fashion. This group, six inches high, served for handle to the lid of a cylindrical pyxis, two palms deep, resting on three lion's claws. With it was found a mirror, the back engraved with the combat of Pollux and Amycus, LOSNA with her crescent standing in the middle, the names in regular Etruscan.

90:* A subsequent thousand years' experience of the blessings of ecclesiastical rule has furnished Walter de Mapes with a more humorous etymology for this title--

"Papa, si rem tangimus nomen habet a re,
Quidquid habent alii solus vult pappare:
Aut si nomen Gallicum vis apocopare,
Payez, payez dit le mot, si vis impetrare."

91:* A play upon τελώναι and τέλη.

92:* Some lurking tradition of this mystery may have suggested the machine of the almond (machina della mandola) containing the Archangel Gabriel, in the spectacle of the Annunciation constructed by Brunelleschi for the church of Sta. Croce. See Vasari's detailed account of this remarkable example of a miracle-play.

94:* This hymn is written in anapæstic verses; its text is in many places hopelessly corrupted by the transcriber. I have therefore often been obliged to conjecture the original sense.

94:† An enunciation of the fundamental doctrine "All is Three," already stated by Hippolytus.

94:‡ That is, will disclose to the faithful the different figures of the Archons of the lower spheres, a promise fulfilled at much length by the author of the Pistis-Sophia.

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