Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/787

Rh two in number, and were subdivided into six divisions, of which the first, containing the ten books “ of the prophets,” dealt with laws, deities, and the education of priests ; the second, consisting of the ten books of the “stolistes,” or official whose duty it was to dress and ornament the statues of the gods, treated of sacrifices and offerings, prayers, hymns, festive processions ; the third, “of the hierogram- matist,” also in ten books, was a repertory of hieroglyphical, cosmographical, geographical, and topographical informa- tion ; the four books ‘of the horoscopus ” were devoted to astronomy and astrology ; the two books “of the chanter ” contained respectively a collection of songsin honour of the gods and a description of the royal life and its duties ; while the sixth and last division, consisting of the six books “of the pastophor,” was medical. Of this canon, which according to the generally received opinion of Bunsen must have been closed at latest in the time of the Psammetichi but probably earlier, numerous small fragments are to be found in the works of Stobzus and other ancient writers. The now well-known Book of the Dead, according to Bunsen, originally had its place among the ten ceremonial books of the “stolistes,” but this is denied by Lepsius; an ancient papyrus recently deciphered by Ebers is believed by that. author to date from about, and to have formed part of one of the books of the pastophor. The epithet Trismegistus (6 tpuopéyeoros, or “ superla- tively” greatest), as applied to Hermes, is of comparatively late origin, and cannot be traced to any author earlier than the. Most probably it arose out of the earlier forms péyas kai péyas or péytoros, derived by the Greeks from early Egyptian sources ; but various other explanations of the appellation have been offered, such as that of the author of the Chronicon Alexandrinum, who maintains that it was because Hermes, while maintaining the unity of God, had also asserted the existence of three supreme or greatest powers that he was called by the Egyptians Trismegistus. This view, which is also adopted by Suidas, seems preferable at least to that met with in Nicolai’s History of Greek Interature, according to which an apocryphal author named Hermes was called tpicpeyiorwos, Simply in order to indicate that he had succeeded and outdone a certain Megistias of Smyrna in astrological, physiognonical, and alchemistic theories. The name of Hermes seems during the third and following centuries to have been regarded as a convenient pseudonym to place at the head of the numerous syncretistic writings in which it was sought to combine Neo-Platonic philosophy, Philonic Judaism, and cabbalistic theosophy, and so provide the world with some acceptable substitute for the Christianity which had even at that time begun to give indications of the ascendency it was destined afterwards to attain. Of these pseudepigraphic Hermetic writings some have come down to us in the original Greek ; others survive in Latin or Arabic translations; but the majority appear to have perished. That which is best known and has been most frequently edited is the zrowudvdpyns sive De Potestate et Saprentia Divina (xou.avdpys being the Divine Intelligence zoyrnv dvdpav), which consists of fifteen chapters treating of such subjects as the nature of God, the origin of the world, the creation and fall of man, and the divine illumina- tion which is the sole means of his deliverance. The Fditio Princeps appeared in Paris in ; and there has been a recent edition by Parthey (1854); the work has also been translated into German by Tiedemann (1781). Along with it are usually printed the certainly later épo. or Definitions of Asclepius, which have sometimes but erroneously been attributed to Apuleius. Other Hermetic writings which have been preserved, and which have been for the most part collected by Patricius in the Vova de Universis Philosophia, are (in Greek) “IatpopaOqparixa mpos “Appwva Aiyirriov, Tept xataxXicews voootytwy mepiyvwotud, "EK HS pabypatuns émuotiyns mpos “Appova; (in Latin) Aphorismi sive Centiloquium, Cyranides ; (in Arabic, but doubtless from a Greek original) an address to the human soul, which has been translated by Fleischer (An die menschliche Seele, 1870). The connexion of the name of Hermes with alchemy will explain what is meant by hermetic sealing, and will account for the use of the phrase “hermetic medicine” by Paracelsus, as also for the so-called “hermetic freemasonry ” of the Middle Ages.

1em  HERMESIANAX, an elegiac poet of the Alexandrian school, was born at Colophon, and flourished in the time of Philip and Alexander, or a little later. He was a friend and admirer—probably also a pupil—of the grammarian and poet Philetas, whom he outlived. His chief work was a poem in three books, which he, following the example of his countrymen Mimnermus and Antimachus, inscribed with the name of his mistress Leontium (said by some to be the same as the mistress of Epicurus). Of this poem a fragment of about one hundred lines has been preserved by Athenczeus (xili. 597) ; and it may serve as a specimen of the style of the school. Erotic in character, and plaintive in tone, it enumerates instances, mythological and historical, of the irresistible power of love, and redeems the monotony of its ground plan by its picturesque language, and by the alternate force and tenderness of its treatment. Hermesianax was exceedingly popular in his own times, and was highly esteemed even in the Augustan period. Propertius follows his example in dedicating the first book of his Llegdes to his mistress Cynthia.

1em  HERMOGENES, of Tarsus, Greek rhetorician, flourished in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, His precocious ability secured him a public appointment as teacher of his art while as yet he was only a boy; but at the age of twenty-five his faculties gave way, and he spent the long remainder of his life in a state of intellectual impotency. In the nine or ten, however, of his activity he composed a whole series of treatises on matters rhetorical, which became popular text-books, and the subject of subsequent commentaries. Of his Téxvy pyropuxy we still possess Tepi Tov otdoewv; Tlepi cipécewr; Tlepi ideGv; epi pebodov dewdryros; and IIpoyypvaopara.

1em  HERMON, the highest mountain in Syria (9150 feet above the Mediterranean), an outlier of the Antilebanon. The name }'7, “separate,” is perhaps due to its isolated position. The Sidonians called it Sirion, and the Amorites Shenir (Deut. iii. ). It is probably the “ high mountain ” near Ceesarea Philippi where the Transfiguration occurred (Mark ix. 2). The modern name is Jebel esh Sheikh, or “chief mountain.” It is also called Jebel eth Thelj, “snowy mountain.” The ridge of Hermon, rising into a dome-