Manual of Christian Iconography

in Athens, from which the scholars around Didron in Paris and elsewhere, having been timely enlightened, remained cold toward the Simonidean fabrications. It is characteristic that Simonides himself gave causes for the rapid recognition of his forgeries. Thus, before his own edition of the Hermeneia, he recorded the aforementioned addition in a newspaper differently, as supposedly a passage of Dionysius; the thus-double forgery in one and the same place of the Hermeneia was first uncovered by the wise archaeologist Alexander Rangavis, who wrote a long essay for the information of the public about this (1851), in which he recounted in detail the daring acts of Simonides regarding Dionysius 1. And yet, not even these restrained the boldness of this detestable man; on the contrary, they magnified it so much that after three whole years, almost the entire writing of Dionysius, forged by him, was delivered to the learned world (1853).

Besides the already mentioned inserted addition, there are numerous fabrications of his own in the edition of Simonides, non-existent in the copies 2. Thus, between §§ 50 and 51 of the first part of the Hermeneia 3, he inserted his own construction, an extensive chapter supposedly in the name of some Hierotheos of the year 518, about "how to raise houses, trees, animals, people in the sun and whatever else you want." In §§ 16, 17, 18, and 19, Dionysius explicitly indicates recipes of Panselinos regarding the construction of preliminary drawing and flesh-toned coloring 4; but since Simonides found in them technical words of very recent times (such as tegki varnish, oumbra umber, psimithi white lead Venetian or French), testifying that Panselinos was not an ancient painter, he removed his name from them, also dividing the 17th into two 5. Between §§ 34 and 35, he inserted three new articles, non-existent in the Hermeneia, titling them "copal varnish," "another varnish," "another varnish of spirits" 6.

1) Pandora, 1851, vol. 1, pp. 553-555.
2) Neither the French edition of Didron and Durand has these, nor the new copy of Gennadios the Russian (Athenian codex 1286).
3) Our edition, p. 34. Simonides, pp. 40-43.
4) Our edition, pp. 20-21. Simonides, pp. 20-21.
5) Simonides, p. 21, §§ 17, 18.
6) Translator note: See continuation on next page.