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

Lactantius here quotes the Greek text of P. S. A., viii. 3, and so once again we can control the Old Latin version. The Church Father is plainly the more reliable, reproducing as he does familiar Hermetic phrasing and style ; and we thus again have an insight into the methods of our rhetorical, truncated, and interpolated Latin Version.

xxii. Ibid., vii. 18, 3; Brandt, p. 640; Fritzsche, ii. 99. THE COSMIC RESTORATION

And Hermes states this [the destruction of the world] 2 plainly. For in that book which bears the title

1 Grenfell (B. P.) and Hunt (A. S.), New Sayings of Jesus, p. 13 (London, 1904).

2 Of. iv. 7 above.

of " The Perfect Sermon," after an enumeration of the evils of which we have spoken, he adds :

FKAGMENT X.

Now when these things shall be, as I have said, Asclepius, then will [our] Lord and Sire, the God and Maker of the First and the One God,1 look down on what is done, and, making firm His Will, — that is the Good, — against disorder, recalling error, and purging out the bad, either by washing it away with water-flood, or burning it away with swiftest fire, or forcibly expelling it with war and famine, — He [then] will bring again His Cosmos to its former state, and so achieve its Eestoration.2

• xxiii. Ibid., Epitome, 4, 4 ; Brandt, p 679 j Fritzsche,
• ii. 117.

OF HERMES AND HIS DOCTRINE CONCERNING GOD

Hermes, — who, on account of his virtue and knowledge of many arts, gained the title of Thrice-greatest, who also in the antiquity of his doctrine preceded the philosophers, and who is worshipped as god among the Egyptians, — declaring the greatness of the One and Only God with unending praises, calls Him God and Father, [and says] He has no name, for that He has no need for a distinctive name,3 inasmuch as He alone is, nor has He any parents, in that He is both from

1 Of. Frag. v.

2 Lactantius quotes the original Greek of P. S. A., xxvi. 1 (p. 48, 24, Goldb.), so that we can thus once more remark the liberties which the Old Latin translation has taken with the text.

3 Cf. Frag. ii.

Himself and by Himself.1

In writing to his son [Tat] he begins as follows :

" To comprehend God is difficult, to speak [of Him]

impossible, even for one who can comprehend ; for the

Perfect cannot be comprehended by the imperfect, nor the Invisible by the visible." 2 xxiv. Ibid., Ep., 14; Brandt, p. 685; Fritzsche, ii. 121. A REPETITION

(Lactantius repeats in almost identical words what he has written in i. 11.)

• xxv. Ibid., Ep., 37 (42), 2; Brandt, p. 712; Fritzsche,
• ii. 140.

PLATO AS PROPHET FOLLOWS TRISMEGISTUS

By means of him [the Logos] as Demiurge,3 as Hermes says, He [God the Father] hath devised the beautiful and wondrous creation of the world. . . .

Finally Plato has spoken concerning the first and second God, not plainly as a philosopher, but as a prophet, perchance in this following Trismegistus, whose words I have added in translation from the Greek.

(Lactantius then translates verbally from the Greek text he has quoted in iv. 6, 4, omitting, however, the last clause and the parenthesis in the middle.)

1 See i. 6 and iv. 8 above.

2 The first clause is a verbatim translation of the text of the Stobsean Extract ii., while the second is a paraphrase even of L.'s own version from the Greek (see ii. 8 above). We learn, however, the new scrap of information that the quotation is from the beginning of the sermon.

3 The reference to the " Demiurge " looks back to iv. 6, 9.

VIII.

AUGUSTINE

i. De Givitate Dei, xxiii. ; Hoffmann (E.), i. 392 (Vienna, 1899-1900).1

THREE QUOTATIONS FROM THE OLD LATIN VERSION
OF THE "PERFECT SERMON"

AUGUSTINE is arguing against the views of Appuleius (first half of the second century) on the cult of the " daimones," and in so doing introduces a long disquisition on the doctrine of " Egyptian Hermes, whom they call Thrice-greatest," concerning image-worship, or the consecrated and "ensouled," or "animated," statues of the gods.