Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

E. From Zosimus and Fulgentius we obtain three Fragments, and from the former and lamblichus, and Julian the Emperor-Philosopher, we obtain a number of valuable references.

Such are what at first sight may appear to be the comparatively scanty remains of what was once an exceedingly abundant literature. But when we remember that this literature was largely reserved and kept secret, we cannot but congratulate ourselves that so much has been preserved ; indeed, as we shall see later on, but for the lucky chance of a Hermetic apologist selecting some of the sermons to exemplify the loyal nature of the Trismegistic teaching with respect to kings and rulers, we should be without any Hermetic Corpus at all, and dependent solely on our extracts and fragments.

But even with our Hermetic Corpus before us we should never forget that we have only a fraction of the Trismegistic literature — the flotsam and jetsam, so to say, of a once most noble vessel that sailed the seas of human endeavour, and was an ark of refuge to many a pious and cultured soul.

References to lost writings of the School will meet us abundantly in the course of our studies, and some attempt will be made later on to form a notion of the main types of the literature.

As for the rest of the so-called Hermetic works, medico-mathematical, astrological and medico-astrological, and alchemical, and for a list of the many inventions attributed to the Thrice-greatest — inventions as numerous as, and almost identical with, those attributed to Orpheus by fond posterity along the line of "pure" Hellenic tradition — I would refer the student to the Bibliotheca Grceca of Joannes Albertus Fabricius.1

For the Alchemical and Mediaeval literature the two magnificent works of Berthelot (M. P. E.) are indispensable— namely, Collection des anciens Alchimistes grecs (Paris, 1888), and La Chimie au Moyen Age (Paris, 1893).

In close connection with the development of this form of " Hermetic " tradition must be taken the Hermes writings and traditions among the Arabs. See Beausobre's Histoire Critique de ManicMe et du ManicMisme (Amsterdam, 1734), i. 326 ; also Fleischer (H. L.), Hermes Trismegislus an die menschliche Seele, Arabisch und DeutscJi (Leipzig, 1870); Bardenhewer (0.), Hermetis Trismegisti gui apud Arabes fertur de Castigatione Animce Liber (Bonn, 1873) ; and especially R Pietschmann, the pupil of Georg Ebers, who devotes the fourth part of his treatise, entitled Hermes Trismegistus nach dgyptischen und orientalischen Uberlieferungen (Leipzig, 1875), to a consideration of the Hermes tradition, " Bei Syrern und Araben."

1 Vol. i., lib. i., cap. vii. See the fourth and last edition (Leipzig, 1790), with up to that time unedited supplements by Fabricius and G. C. Heumann, and very numerous and important additions by Q. C. Harles.

p. 6

Reitzenstein treats very briefly of the development of this later Hermetic literature on pp. 188-200 of his Poimandres.1

THE ORIGINAL MS. OF OUR CORPUS

From the fragmentary nature of the remains of the Trismegistic literature that have come down to us, it will be at once seen that a critical text of them is a complicated undertaking; for, apart from the Corpus, the texts have to be collected from the works of many authors. This, however, has never yet been done in any critical fashion ; so that a translator has first of all to find the best existing critical texts of these authors from which to make his version. This, I hope, I have succeeded in doing ; but even so, numerous obscurities still remain in the texts of the excerpts, fragments, and quotations, and it is highly desirable that some scholar specially acquainted with our literature should collect all these together in one volume, and work over the labours of specialists on the texts of Stobseus and the Fathers, with the added equipment of his own special knowledge.