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

A more appropriate parallel is to be found in P. S. A., xxviii. 1 : " When, [then,] the soul's departure from the body shall take place, — then shall the judgment and the weighing of its merit pass into its highest daimon's power" — a passage, however, which retains far stronger traces of the Egyptian prototype of the idea than does that quoted by Tertullian.

1 Determinatam. 2 Tertullian marks it by an " inquit."

V.

CYPEIAN1

i. De Idolorum Vanitate, vi.j Baluze, p. 220 (Paris, 1726). GOD IS BEYOND ALL UNDERSTANDING

THRICE- GREATEST Hermes speaks of the One God, and confesses Him beyond all understanding and all appraisement.

This is evidently a reference to the most quoted sentence of Hermes. See Justin Martyr i. below, and other references.

Chambers (p. 140), after this notice in Cyprian, inserts a passage from Eusebius (c. 325 A.D.), which he says is " a clear quotation from the ' Poemandres ' of Hermes, whom, however, he [Eusebius] probably confounds with the Shepherd of Hennas."

Eusebius (Hist. Ecc., v. 8), however, quotes Irenseus (iv. 20, 2), who quotes literally The Shepherd of Hermas (Mand., i.). Indeed, it is the most famous sentence in that early document. See the list of its quotations by the Fathers in the note to Gebhardt and Harnack's text (Leipzig, 1897), p. 70. Such verbal exactitude is not to be found in the remaining Trismegistic literature ; the idea, however, is the basis of the whole Trismegistic theology.

1 About 200-258 A.D.

VI.

ARNOBIUS1

i. Adversus Nationes, ii. 13; Hildebrand (G. F.), p. 136 (Halle, 1844).

THE SCHOOL OF HEKMES

(ARNOBIUS complains that the followers of the philosophic schools laugh at the Christians, and selects especially the adherents of a certain tradition as follows :) You, you I single out, who belong to the school of Hermes, or of Plato and Pythagoras, and the rest of you who are of one mind and walk in union in the same paths of doctrine.2

1 He was a converted philosopher, and the teacher of Lactantius ; flourished about 304 A.D.

2 Here again, as elsewhere, Hermes comes first ; he was evidently regarded as the leader of philosophic theology as contrasted with popular Christian dogmatics. See R. 306.

VII.

LACTANTIUS1

• i. Divinx Iwtitutiones, i. 6, 1 ; Brandt, p. 18; Fritzsche,
• i. 13.2

THOYTH-HERMES AND HIS BOOKS ON THE GNOSIS

LET us now pass to divine testimonies; but, first of all, I will bring into court testimony which is like divine [witness], both on account of its exceeding great age, and because he whom I shall name was carried back again from men unto the gods.

In Cicero,3 Caius Cotta,4 the Pontifex, arguing against the Stoics about faiths and the diversity of opinions which obtain concerning the gods, in order that, as was the way of the Academics,6 he might bring all things into doubt, declares that there were five Hermeses ; and after enumerating four of them in succession, [he adds] that the fifth was he by whom

1 A pupil of Arnobius ; flourished at the beginning of the fourth century.

2 Brandt (S.), L. Caeli Firmiani Lactanti Opera Omnia, — Pars /., Divinae Institutiones et Epitome (Vienna, 1890). Pars II., to be edited by G. Laubmann, has not yet appeared. Fritzsche (0. F.), Div. Institt. (Leipzig, 1842), 2 vols.

3 De Natura Deorum, iii. 22, 56.

4 C. Aurelius Cotta, 124-76 (?) B.C.

6 Cicero makes Cotta maintain the cause of this school both here and in the De Oratore.

Argus was slain,1 and for that cause he fled into Egypt, and initiated the Egyptians into laws and letters.

The Egyptians call him Thoyth, and from him the first month of their year (that is, September) has received its name. He also founded a city which even unto this day is called Hermopolis. The people of Pheneus,2 indeed, worship him as a god ; but, although