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

And so it appears that he [Cronus] was not born from Heaven (which is impossible), but from that man who was called Uranus ; and that this is so, Trismegistus bears witness, when, in stating that there have been very few in whom the perfect science has been found,

1 Was, however, this the spelling found in Cicero, for Firmianus takes it from the text of Tully ? It is a pity we have no critical apparatus of the text of Lactantius, for the MSS. of Cicero present us with the following extraordinary list of variants : Then, Ten, Their, Thoyt, Theyt, Theyn, Thetum, Them, Thernum, Theutatem, Theut, Thoyth, Thoth. See n. 5 to the text of Cicero, cited above. C/. R. 117, n. 2.

2 Which he probably took from P. S. A., xxxvii. 4: "Whose home is in a place called after him."

3 Chambers (p. 41, n. 1), in referring it to C. H., v. (vi.) 10, is mistaken.

he mentioned in their number Uranus, Cronus and

Hermes, his own kinsfolk.1

Hi. Ibid., ii. 8, 48; Brandt, p. 138; Fritzsche, i. 89.

DIVINE PROVIDENCE

For the World was made by Divine Providence, not to mention Thrice-greatest, who preaches this.2 iv. Ibid., ii. 8, 68; Brandt, p. 141 ; Fritzsche, i. 91.

ON MORTAL AND IMMORTAL SIGHT
His [God's] works are seen by the eyes; but how
He made them, is not seen even by the mind, " in that,"
as Hermes says :

FKAGMENT III.

Mortal cannot draw nigh3 to the Immortal, nor temporal to the Eternal, nor the corruptible to That which knoweth no corruption.4

And, therefore, hath the earthly animal not yet capacity to see celestial things, in that it is kept shut within the body as in a prison house, lest with freed sense, emancipate, it should see all.

1 Cf. G. #., x. (xi.) 5 ; P. S. A., xxxvii. 1. Also Lact., Epit.,
14. In my commentary on the first passage I have shown that
Lactantius is probably here referring to a lost Hermetic treatise.

2 Cf. Fragg. op. Stob., Eel, i. 5, 16, 20. It is to be noticed from the context that Lactantius places Trisinegistus in a class apart together with the Sibylline Oracles and Prophets, and then proceeds to speak of the philosophers, Pythagoreans, Platonists, etc. He also repeats the same triple combination in iv. 6.

3 Propinquare. L. glosses this as meaning " come close to and follow with the intelligence."

* Cf. Frag. ap. Cyril, C. /., i. (vol. vi., p. 31 c).

The first part of this citation (which Lactantius gives in Latin) is identical in idea with a sentence in Frag, iv. — that favourite source of quotation, which Stobseus, Ex. ii. (Flor. Ixxx. [Ixxviii.] 9), excerpted from "The [Sermon] to Tat."1 It might, then, be thought that this was simply a paraphrase of Lactantius', or that he was quoting from memory, and that the second sentence was not quotation but his own writing. But the second sentence is so thoroughly Trismegistic that it has every appearance of being genuine.2 v. Ibid., ii. 10, 13; Brandt, p. 149; Fritzsche, i. 96. MAN MADE AFTER THE IMAGE OF GOD

But the making of the truly living man out of clay 3 is of God. And Hermes also hands on the tradition of this fact, — for not only has he said that man was made by God after the Image of God,4 but also he has attempted to explain with what skilfulness He has formed every single member in the body of man, since there is not one of them which is not admirably suited not only for what it has to do, but also adapted for beauty.5

Man made after the Image of God is one of the fundamental doctrines of the Trismegistic tradition. For instance, P. S. A., vii. 2 : " The [man] ' essential,' as say the Greeks, but which we call the ' form of the

1 Compare also Lact., Epit., 4.

2 It is interesting to note, in the history of the text-tradition, that the received reading (r^voi ("be expressed") in Stobaeus stands in one MS. (A) <rvnftriv<u, which seems to be a transference from the original of L.'s propinquare.

3 Limo, — slime or mud.

4 Lact. repeats this in vii. 4. Cf. C. H., i. 12.
6 Cf. C. H., v. (vi.) 6.

Divine Similitude'"; and x. 3: "Giving the greatest thanks to God, His Image reverencing, — not ignorant that he [man] is, too, God's image, the second [one] ; for that there are two images of God — Cosmos and man." l vi. Ibid., ii. 12, 4 ; Brandt, p. 156; Fritzsche, i. 100. HERMES THE FIRST NATURAL PHILOSOPHER

Empedocles2 . . . [and others] . . . laid down four elements, fire, air, water, and earth, — [in this] perchance following Trismegistus, who said that our bodies were composed of these four elements by God.