24. But swear, says Justinus, if you wish to know the things “which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man,”[286] (that is) Him who is good above all things, the Highest, to keep the ineffable secrets of the teaching. For our Father also, when he saw the Good One and was perfected by him, kept silence as to [Sidenote: p. 226.] the secrets[287] and swore as it is written: “The Lord sware and will not repent.”[288] Having then thus sealed up these (secrets), he turns their minds to many myths through a quantity (of books), and thus leads to the Good One, perfecting the mystæ by unspoken mysteries. But we shall not travel through more (of his works). We shall give as a sample the ineffable things from one book of his, it being one which he clearly thinks of high repute. It is inscribed _Baruch_.[289] We shall disclose one myth set forth in it by him out of many, it being also in Herodotus. Having transformed[290] this, he tells it to his hearers as new, the whole system of his teaching being made up out of it.
25. Now Herodotus[291] says that Heracles when driving Geryon’s oxen from Erytheia[292] came to Scythia and being wearied by the way lay down to sleep in some desert place for a short time. While he was asleep his horse disappeared, mounted on which he had made his long journey.[293] On waking he made search over most of the desert in the attempt to find his horse. He entirely misses the horse, [Sidenote: p. 227.] but finding a certain semi-virgin girl[294] in the desert, he asks her if she had seen the horse anywhere. The girl said that she had seen it, but would not at first show it to him unless Heracles would go with her to have connection with her. But Herodotus says that the upper part of the girl as far as the groin was that of a virgin, but that the whole body below the groin had in some sort the frightful appearance of a viper. But Heracles, being in a hurry to find his horse yielded to the beast. For he knew her and made her pregnant, and foretold to her after connection that she had in her womb three sons by him who would be famous.[295] And he bade her when they were born to give them the names Agathyrsus, Gelonus, and Scytha. And taking the horse from the beast-like girl as his reward, he went away with his oxen. But after this, there is a long story in Herodotus.[296] Let us dismiss it at present. But we will explain something of what Justinus teaches when he turns this myth into (one of) the generation of the things of the universe.