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Paul says that. The account of such presents would seem to be that the writer speaks as if quoting from a book that he has actually before him. It is not impossible that Heracleon and Ptolemaeus may have been still living at the time when Hippolytus wrote, but this cannot be inferred simply from the tense of the verb. Surer data are supplied by Irenaeus.
Irenaeus mentions Ptolemaeus several times in his first and second books, and on one occasion he couples with his the name of Heracleon. But to what date does this evidence of Irenaeus refer? At what time was Irenaeus himself writing.
The array of witnesses examined runs thus: Clement of Rome, Barnabas, Hermas, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Hegesippus, Papias of Hierapolis, the Clementines, the Epistle to Diognetus, Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, Tatian, Dionysius of Corinth, Melito of Sardis, Claudius Apollinaris, Athenagoras, Epistle of Vienne and Lyons, Ptolemaeus and Heracleon, Celsus and the Canon of Muratori.
Ptolemaeus and Heracleon were both, we know, contemporaries of Irenaeus, so that the quotation was used among the Valentinians at least in the time of Irenaeus, and very possibly earlier, for it usually takes a certain time for a subject to be brought into controversy.
Six others Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, Ptolemaeus, Heracleon, and Celsus are heretical or infidel writers whom we only know through notices or scraps of their works in the writings of the Christian Fathers who refuted them. The Epistle of the Martyrs of Vienne and Lyons is only in part preserved in the pages of Eusebius. The Canon of Muratori is a mutilated fragment of uncertain date.
We shall probably not be wrong in referring many of the Valentinian quotations given by Irenaeus to Ptolemaeus and Heracleon. By the first writer we also have extant an Epistle to a disciple called Flora, which has been preserved by Epiphanius. This Epistle, which there is no reason to doubt, contains unequivocal references to our first Gospel. Epistle to Flora. Epiph. Haer. 217 A. Ibid. 217 D.
To which one of them, Heracleon the Megarean, replied: "Tis for such as are puzzled about inquiring whether the future tense of the verb is spelt with a double A, or that hunt after the derivation of the comparatives and , and the superlatives and , to knit their brows whilst discoursing of their science: but as to philosophical discourses, they always divert and cheer up those that entertain them, and never deject them or make them sad."
We are now very near emerging into open daylight; but there are three items in the evidence which lie upon the border of the debateable ground, and as questions have been raised about these it may be well for us to discuss them. We have already had occasion to speak of the two Gnostics Ptolemaeus and Heracleon.
The allusions are all made in this incidental manner; and the life of Origen, if he was born, as is supposed, about 185 A.D., would overlap that of Heracleon. What evidence could be more sufficient? or if such evidence is to be discarded, what evidence are we to accept?
Another pirate chief Heracleon destroyed in 682 the squadron equipped in Sicily against him, and ventured with no more than four open boats to sail into the harbour of Syracuse. Two years later his colleague Pyrganion even landed at the same port, established himself there and sent forth flying parties into the island, till the Roman governor at last compelled him to re-embark.
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