Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/428

Rh 414 HERMES. at a comparatively early period. Thus the Greek Plermes was identified with the Egyptian Thot, or Theut, as early as the time of Plato. ( PhUeb. § 23 ; comp. Cic. de NaU Deor. iii. 22.) But the intennixture of the religious ideas of the two coun- tries became more prominent at the time when Christianity began to raise its head, and when pagan philosophy, in the form of New Platonism, made its last and desperate effort against the Christian religion. Attempts were then made to represent the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians in a higher and more spiritual light, to amalgamate it with the ideas of the Greeks, and thereby to give to the latter a deep religious meaning, which made them appear as a very ancient divine revelation, and as a suitable counterpoise to the Christian re- ligion. The Egyptian Thot or Hermes was con- sidered as the real author of every thing produced and discovered by the human mind, as the father of all knowledge, inventions, legislation, religion, &c. Hence every thing that man had discovered and committed to writing was regarded as the property of Hermes. As he was thus the source of all knowledge and thought, or the Koyos embodied, he was termed TpXs ixeyLaros, Hermes Trismegistus, or simply Trismegistus. It was fabled that Py- thagoras and Plato had derived all their knowledge from the Egyptian Hermes, who had recorded his thoughts and inventions in inscriptions upon pillars. Clemens of Alexandria {Stroin. vi. 4. p. 757) speaks of forty-two books of Hermes, containing the sura total of human and divine knowledge and wisdom, and treating on cosmography, astronomy, geography, religion, with all its . forms and rites, and more especially on medicine. There is no reason for doubting the existence of such a work or works, under the name of Hermes, at the time of Clemens. In the time of the New Platonists, the idea of the authorship of Hermes was carried still further, and applied to the whole range of literature. lamblichiis {De Myst. init.) designates the sum total of all the arts and sciences among the Egyptians by the name Hermes, and he adds that, of old, all authors used to call their own productions the works of Hermes. This notion at once ex- plains the otherwise strange statement in lambli- chus {De Myst. viii. 1), that Hermes was the author of 20,000 works ; Manetho even speaks of 36,525 works, a number which exactly corresponds with that of the years which he assigns to his several dynasties of kings. lamblichus mentions the works of Hermes in several passages, and speaks of them as translated from the Egyptian into Greek {De Myst. viii. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7) ; Plutarch also {De Is. et Os. p. 375, e.) speaks of works at- tributed to Hermes, and so does Galen {De Simpl. Med. vi. 1) and Cyrillus {Contr. Jul. i. 30). The existence of works under the name of Hermes, as early as the second century after Christ, is thus proved beyond a doubt. Their contents were chiefly of a philosophico-religious nature, on the nature and attributes of the deity, on the world and nature ; and from the work of Lactantius, who wrote his Institutes chiefly to refute the educated and learned among the pagans, we cannot help perceiving that Christianity, the religion which it was intended to crush by those works, exercised a considerable influence upon their authors. (See e. g. Div. Insiit. i. 8, ii. 10, vii. 4, 13.) The question as to the real authorship of what are called the works of Hermes, or Hermes Tris- j HERMES. megistus, has been the subject of much controversy, but the most probable opinion is, that they were productions of New Platonists. Some of them appear to have been written in a pure and sober spirit, and were intended to spread the doctrines of the New Platonists, and make them ponular, in opposition to the rising power of Christianity, but others were full of the most fantastic and vision- ary theories, consisting for the most part of astro- logical and magic speculations, the most favourite topics of New Platonism. Several works of this class have come down to our times, some in the Greek language and others only in Latin trans- lations ; but all those which are now extant are of an inferior kind, and were, in all probability, com- posed during the later period of New Platonism, when a variety of Christian notions had become em- bodied in that system. It may be taken for granted, on the whole, thatnoneof the works bearing the name of Hennes, in the form in which they are now before us, belongs to an earlier date than the fourth, or perhaps the third, century of our era, though it cannot be denied that they contain ideas which may be as ancient as New Platonism itself. We here notice only the principal works which have been published, for many are extant only in MS., and buried in various libraries. 1. Aoyos TeAeios, perhaps the most ancient among the works attributed to Hermes. The Greek original is quoted by Lactantius {Div. Instit. vii. 18), but we now possess only a Latin trans- lation, which was formerly attributed to Appuleius of Madaura. It bears the title Asc/epitis, or Hermetis Trismegisti Asdepiiis sive de Naiura De- orum Dialogus, and seems to have been written shortly before the time of Lactantius. Its object is to refute Christian doctrines, but the author has at the same time made use of them for his own purposes. It seems to have been composed in Egypt, perhaps at Alexandria, and has the fonn of a dialogue, in which Hermes converses with a dis- ciple (Asclepius) upon God, the universe, nature, &c., and quite in the spirit of the New Platonic philosophy. It is printed in some editions of Appu- leius, and also in those of the Poemander, by Ficinus and Patricius. The latter editions, as well as the Poemander, by Hadr. Turnebus, contain 2.0f)0i 'AcTKKTjiriov TrpdsAfXfx.wva PacriXta, which is probably the production of the same author as the preceding work. Asclepius, who here calls Hermes his master, discusses questions of a similar nature, such as God, matter, man, and the like. 3. 'Epfiov rod rpiafieyicTTOv XIoijwaVSpTjs, is a work of larger extent, and in so far the most im- portant production of the kind we possess. Tiie title UoifiavSpris, or Poemayider (from iroifxifiv^ a shepherd, pastor) seems to have been chosen in imitation of the iroi^iriv^ or: Pastor of Plermas [Her- MAS], who has sometimes even been considered as the author of the Poemander. The whole work was divided by Ficinus into fourteen, but by Par tricius into twenty books, each with a separate heading. It is written in the form of a dialogue, and can scarcely have been composed previous to the fourth century of our era. It treats of nature, the creation of the world, the deity, his nature and at- tributes, the human soul, knowledge, and the like ; and all these subjects are discussed in the spirit of New Platonism, but sometimes Christian, oriental, and Jewish notions are mixed up with it in a re- markable manner, showing the syncretism so pe-