The historical figure known as Origen was perhaps the leading mystical Christian philosopher of the Third Century, an indefatigable traveler and an inexhaustible writer, most of whose works were declared heretical and destroyed. Fortunately for Theodore Vrettos, so little has actually survived about the man that he can be fictionalized freely. But Vrettos has little knack for getting himself into the past and so cannot take us with him. For plot, we have a travelogue through a seemingly nondescript Roman world and some mysterious persecutions and sexual traumas. As for Origen himself, Vrettos gives us a rather peevish adoles-cent philosopher, a man of no clear notions who picks fights and changes the subject as his method of discourse, a sort of pretentious college-dorm hippie. ""When clouds fill the sky with darkness mankind must derive the lesson that life is not all happiness and that it should learn to live with sorrow""--thus Origen to Plotinus. There are unenlightening cameo appearances by famous guest stars of the Third Century, references to innumerable dogmas without much explanation of any of them--even the hero's--and contrasting styles of writing, self-consciously archaic vs. modern slang. Dull.