A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

1214 VALENTINUS. VALENTINUS.
was completed by the attendants of Valentinian, ciple of St. Paul might be still alive. (Clinton,
and Boethius, the friend of Aetius, also shared his Fast. Rom. s. aa. 140, 144.)
fate. (A. D. 454.) The principal friends of Aetius Valentinus was one of the boldest and most inwere singly summoned to the palace, and mur- fluential heresiarchs of the Gnostic sect. A minute
dered. Thus the bravest man, the ablest com- account of his doctrines, into which it is not conmander of the age, the last great Roman soldier, sistent with the plan of this work to enter, will
perished by the treacherous hand of the most un- be found in the works quoted below: perhaps, for
warlike of the Roman Caesars. general readers, the brief but clear exposition of
A grievous insult to Petronius Maximus is said Valentinianism by Mosheim will be found the
to have been the immediate cause of Valentinian's most useful.
death. Maximus had a handsome wife, who re- There is also a good and brief account in Giesesisted the emperor's solicitations, but he got her ler, which we extract, as the work is not so well
within the palace by an artifice, and compelled her known to the English reader, as that of Mosheim
to yield to force what she had refused to persuasion. -" From the great original (according to him,
The injured husband resolved on the emperor's de- $id,0s, 7rpo7rdacrwp, 7rpoapXi), with whom is the
struction, and he gained over some of the domestics consciousness of himself (&ssola, aiysj), emanate
of Valentinian who had been in the service of in succession male and female aeons (Noos or
Aetius. While he was amusing himself in the MovoyaOvs and &AfjeLa, Aoyosand &X7OeLa, Xdtyor
field of Mars with some spectacle, two of these and (Ceo7, dvsYOpsuros and cKKXc7o'oia, &c.), so that 30
men fell upon him; and, after killing the guilty aeons together (distinguished into the'Oy6ods,
Heraclius, despatched the emperor without any AeKcis, and AWt3eKas) form the 7rAhpwoya. Fron
resistance from those who were about him, A. D. the passionate striving of the last aeon, the aopla,
455. This was the end of Valentinian III., a to unite with Bythos itself, arises an untimely
feeble and contemptible prince, the last of the being (X? Kic'-o opofa, yOv'urqLuOs,'AxaCIcO, i. e.
family of Theodosius. He was ill brought up, and FnlD:1), which, wandering about outside the
had all the vices that in a princely station dis- pleroma, communicates the germ of life to matter,
grace a man's character. Even his zeal for the and forms the ATq7yovpyods of psychical material,
Catholic faith and the church is not allowed to have who immediately creates the world. In this
been sincere. three kinds of material are mixed, rb 7rVEv/uaaTK1ov,
(Gibbon, Decline and Fl(ll, c. 33, &c.; Tille- Tb JUXLKJV, Tb VALICKO. The result of the course
mont, Ilistuire dles E lmpesears, vol. vi.) [G. L.] of the world is, that the two first should be separated from the last, and that -rb 7rvevaTrKdv'
should return to the pleroma, lb VkXKcdv into the
0'7dros Uesa7rTos,, where the Achamoth now
-~ A (mEdwells. In the mean time, two new aeons, Christ
and the Holy Spirit, had arisen, in order to re\, ~.a/~.~ ~~'I "~ " t - ~ 1~ s~ig,:l:?tstore the disturbed harmony in the pleroma; then
\\flrt ~ @ e anthere emanated from all the aeons Jesus (Owrfip),
i;@P*;o,~'1 who, as future associate (aO~vyos) of the Achamoth, shall lead back into the pleroma this and
the pneumatic natures. The ~oWrp united itself
at the baptism with the psychical Messiah proCOIN OF VALENT~IINIANUS mIl. mised by the Demiurgus. Just so is the letter of
VALENTI'NUS (Obaesr7?vos), the celebrated the doctrines of Jesus for psychical men. On the
Gnostic heresiarch of the second century, was a other hand, the spirit introduced by the Soter or
native of Egypt, whence he went to Rome, and Saviour, is for the spiritual. These theosophic
there propagated his heresy, having seceded from dreams were naturally capable of being moulded
the church, if we may believe Tertullian (c. Va- in many different ways; and, accordingly, among
lest. 4) in consequence of being disappointed in Valentine's disciples are found many departures
the hope of obtaining a bishopric. The chrono- from their teacher. The most important of his
graphers fix the time at which he flourished in the followers were Heracleon, Ptolemy, and Marcus."
reign of Antoninus Pius, from A. D. 140, when they It must, however, be remembered that our
represent him as coming to home, and onwards. knowledge of his system is derived almost entirely
(Euseb. Cuiton. s. a. 2155; Hieron. s. a. 2156; from the works of the writers against the heresies,
-Syncell. p. 351, a.) Eusebius (H. E. iv. 11) also whose expositions of their opponents' views are often
tells us, on the authority of Irenaeus, that Valen- very unfair. Nothing is extant of his own works,
tinus came to Rome in the episcopate of Hyginus, except a few insignificant fragments, quoted by the
flourished under Pius, and survived till the epis- writers referred to. (Irenaeus, adv. Haeres. i.
copate of Anicetus, about A. D. 140-155. (Comp. 1-7; Tertullian, c. Valentinianos; Clem. Alex.
Euseb. Chron. and Hieron., s. a. 2159.) Some passinz; Epiphanius, Haeres. 31; J. F. Buddeus,
writers assign to him an earlier date, chiefly on de Haeresi Valentin., appended to his Introd. in
the authority of the tradition, preserved by Cle- Hist. Philos. Hebr.; Cave, Hist. Litt. s. a. 120,
mens Alexandrinus (Stroml.vii. p. 764), that he had pp. 50, 51, ed. Basil.; Mosheim, de Reb. Christ.
heard Theodas, a disciple of St. Paul: hence Cave ante Const. pp. 371-389, Eecl. Hist. B. i. cent. ii.
places him at the year A;. D. 120. The two opi- pt. ii. c. 5. ~~ 15-17, vol. i. pp. 191-193, ed.
nions may be reconciled by supposing, with Clin- Murdock and Soames; Walch, Hist. d. Ketzeton, that Valentinus did not begin to propagate reyen, vol. i. pp. 335-386; Schrbckh, CI;ristlicle
his heresy till late in life; and, supposing him to KIircitengeschiclhte, vol. ii. p. 359; Gieseler, Eccles.
have been seventy years of age in A. D. 150, the Ilist. vol. i. pp. 140, 141, Davidson's transl.,
first year of Anicetus, he would be twenty-five in Neander, Kirhclengescliclte, vol. i. pt. ii. pp. 704
A. D. 105, when it was quite possible that a dis- - 7l.) [P. S.]