Manual of Christian Iconography

text. Having taken this, as he had prepared it, with him—along with other pseudonymous fabrications and not a few genuine manuscripts from Athonite libraries—he came to Athens, proposing to the authorities there the purchase of these items and presenting himself as a magnifier of the glory of Greece. To achieve this, he utilized for a considerable time public clamor in newspapers 1, opinions of fanciful scholars, and others incapable of diagnosing paleographic codices. He even dared to seek the judgment of specialized philologists, presenting them with his notorious forged Symais printed there. But it was immediately rejected by a wise man, Andreas Moustoxydis, via a printed ironical letter to Simonides 2. Others, such as Alexander Rangavis and Stephanos Koumanoudis, expressed their individual opinions regarding the falsity of the Simonidean manuscripts publicly and with delicate frankness 3. However, Simonides was able to deceive some renowned men, such as Typaldos Kozakis 4 and Constantine Oikonomos. This Oikonomos paradoxically became a spreader (in 1849) of Simonides' forgery concerning Dionysius and Panselinos, even before the printing (in 1853) of the spurious Hermeneia text itself. He accepted it as genuine currency and formulated its contents enthusiastically within a sufficiently serious work 5. To support the words of the pseudo-Hierotheos in the Hermeneia regarding Panselinos, Simonides composed a passage in the Symais (1849), through which he presented as the inventor of heliotype a Panselinos of an unknown time according to the false author of the Symais, yet identified with the painter Panselinos cited in the Hermeneia

1) Synterhetike, Aug 15, 1848, no. 87. Elpis, 1848, no. 485. And many other Athenian, Smyrnean, and Constantinople newspapers, such as Aion, Amaltheia, and the Constantinople Telegraphos, were stirring things up at that time over Simonides’ supposed philological discoveries.
2) Pandora, 1851, vol. 1, pp. 262–263.
3) Ibid., pp. 551–556, 565–574. Cf. Alexander Lykurgos, Enthüllungen über den Simonides-Dindorfschen Uranios. Leipzig 1856, p. 45 ff.
4) See K. Simonides’ Geographika te kai nomika ten Kephallenian aphononta Geographical and legal matters concerning Cephalonia etc., Athens 1850, p. 30.
5) K. Oikonomou, Peri ton o' hermeneuton Concerning the seventy translators. Athens 1849, vol. 4, p. 218.