That the Severians, whoever they were, were Encratites in the wide sense, that is, strict abstainers from flesh, wine, and marriage, cannot be denied (compare with this description of Eusebius that of Epiphanius in Hær. XLV., also Theodoret’s Hær. Fab. I. 21, who says that Apolinarius wrote against the Severian Encratites,—a sign that the Severians and the Encratites were in some way connected in tradition even though Theodoret’s statement may be unreliable). But that they were connected with Tatian and the Encratitic sect to which he belonged, as Eusebius states, is quite out of the question. Tatian was a decided Paulinist (almost as much so as Marcion himself). He cannot, therefore, have had anything to do with this Ebionitic, anti-Pauline sect, known as the Severians. Whether there was ever such a person as Severus, or whether the name arose later to explain the name of the sect (possibly taken from the Latin severus, “severe,” as Salmon suggests), as the name Ebion was invented to explain the term Ebionites, we do not know. We are ignorant also of the source from which Eusebius took his description of the Severians, as we do not find them mentioned in any of the earlier anti-heretical works. Eusebius must have heard, as Epiphanius did, that they were extreme ascetics, and this must have led him, in the absence of specific information as to their exact position, to join them with Tatian and the Encratites,—a connection which can be justified on no other ground.