Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

1 Augustine's quotation ends here.

2 Sepulchrorum erit mortuorumque plenissima. This sentence is quoted verbatim by Augustine, De Civitate Dei, xxvi.

And Egypt will be made the home of Scyth 1 or Indian, or some one like to them, — that is a foreign neighbour.2

Ay, for the Godly company3 shall mount again to Heaven, and their forsaken worshippers shall all die out ; and Egypt, thus bereft of God and man, shall be abandoned.

4. And now I speak to thee, 0 Eiver, holiest [Stream]! I tell thee what will be. With bloody torrents shalt thou overflow thy banks. Not only shall thy streams divine be stained with blood ; but they shall all flow over [with the same].

The tale of tombs shall far exceed the [number of the] quick ; and the surviving remnant shall be Egyptians in their tongue alone, but in their actions foreigners.

XXV

1. Why dost thou weep, Asclepius? Nay, more than this, by far more wretched, — Egypt herself shall be impelled and stained with greater ills.

For she, the Holy [Land], and once deservedly

1 Compare Colossians iii. 11 : "Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free : but Christ is all, and in all."

2 Vicina barbaria ; lit. a neighbouring foreign country. Compare this with the previous note. It is strange the two, Scyth and barbarian, coming twice together.

3 Divinitas.

VOL. ii. 23

the most beloved by God, by reason of her pious service of the Gods on earth, — she, the sole colony1 of holiness, and teacher of religion [on the earth], shall be the type of all that is most barbarous.

And then, out of our loathing for mankind, the World will seem no more deserving of our wonder and our praise.

All this good thing,2 — than which there has been fairer naught that can be seen, nor is there anything, nor will there [ever] be, — will be in jeopardy.

2. And it will prove a burden unto men ; and on account of this they will despise and cease to love this Cosmos as a whole, — the changeless work of God ; the glorious construction of the Good, comprised of multifold variety of forms ; the engine of God's Will, supporting His own work ungrudgingly ; the multitudinous whole massed in a unity of all, that should be reverenced, praised and loved, — by them at least who have the eyes to see.

1 Deductio • the technical term for leading out a colony from the metropolis or mother city. Compare Philo, De Vita Contemplativa, P. 892, M. 474 (Conybeare, p. 58) : " In Egypt there are crowds of them [the Therapeuts] in every province, or nome as they call it, and especially at Alexandria. For they who are in every way the most highly advanced, lead out a colony (aTToiKiav ffre\\ovTai), as it were to the Therapeutic father-land " ; and also the numerous parallel passages cited by Conybeare from Philo's other writings.

2 Sc. the Cosmos.

For Darkness will be set before the Light, and Death will be thought preferable to Life. No one will raise his eyes to Heaven ; the pious man will be considered mad, the impious a sage ; the frenzied held as strong, the worst as best.

3. For soul, and all concerning it, — whereby it doth presume that either it hath been born deathless, or that it will attain to deathlessness, according to the argument I have set forth for you, — [all this] will be considered not only food for sport,1 but even vanity.

Nay, [if ye will] believe me, the penalty of death shall be decreed to him who shall devote himself to the Religion of the Mind.

New statutes shall come into force, a novel law ; naught [that is] sacred, nothing pious, naught that is worthy of the Heaven, or Gods in Heaven, shall [e'er] be heard, or [even] mentally believed.

4. The sorrowful departure of the Gods from men takes place ; bad angels 2 only stay, who mingled with humanity will lay their hands on them, and drive the wretched folk to every ill of recklessness, — to wars, and robberies, deceits, and all those things that are opposed to the soul's nature.1

1 Of. xii. 2 above.

2 Nocentes angeli, — usually daimones in our tractates ; still, as Lactantius (D. /., ii. 15) says that Hermes calls the daimones "evil angels" (ayy&ovs irovrjpovs), he most probably took it from the Greek original of our sermon.