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Alcibiades of Apamea

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was a propagator of heretical doctrines and trafficker in professed spiritual powers, who found his way to Rome from the valley of Orontes, in the time of Hippolytus, early in the 3d century. According to. the same authority, Alcibiades was led to Rome by what he had heard of the heretical teachings of Calixtus, then bishop of Rome. On this groundwork he conceived the hope of erecting a more subtle philosophical system, composed of elements derived from the Ebionites, Pythagoreans, Eastern magicians, and Jewish cabalists. He brought with him as his credentials the Book of Elchasai (Eusebins, vi, 38), received from the hand of an angel. He was openly met and successfully resisted by Hippolytus, and his heresy appears to have been speedily and effectually crushed. The untrustworthy Nicephorus (Histt. Eccles. v, 24) makes Alcibiades an opponent of the Elcesaites (q.v.).