“Justin Martyr in his first Apology, addressed to Antoninus Pius, writes thus (c. 26):  ‘There was one Simon a Samaritan, of the village called Gitton, who in the reign of Claudius Cæsar, and in your royal city of Rome, did mighty feats of magic by the art of dæmons working in him.  He was considered a god, and as a god was honoured among you with a statue, which statue was set up in the river Tiber between the two bridges, and bears this inscription in Latin: Simoni Deo Sancto; which is, To Simon the holy God. “The substance of this story is repeated by Irenæus (adv. Hær. I. xxiii. 1), and by Tertullian (Apol. c. 13), who reproaches the Romans for installing Simon Magus in their Pantheon, and giving him a statue and the title ‘Holy God.’ “In a.d. 1574, a stone, which had formed the base of a statue, was dug up on the site described by Justin, the Island in the Tiber, bearing an inscription—‘Semoni Sanco Deo Fidio Sacrum, &c.’  Hence it has been supposed that Justin mistook a statue of the Sabine God, ‘Semo Sancus,’ for one of Simon Magus.  See the notes in Otto’s Justin Martyr, and Stieren’s Irenæus. “On the other hand Tillemont (Memoires, t. ii. p. 482) maintains that Justin in an Apology addressed to the emperor and written in Rome itself cannot reasonably be supposed to have fallen into so manifest an error.  Whichever view we take of Justin’s accuracy concerning the inscription and the statue, there is nothing improbable in his statement that Simon Magus was at Rome in the reign of Claudius.”  (Extracted by permission from the Speaker’s Commentary, Introduction to the Epistle to the Romans, p. 4.)