PREFACE. xvii 



Plotinus, and died in Alexandria A.D. 241. Of this, except 

 such of the extracts in Stobaeus and Lactantius as are in 

 Greek, there is only one version extant a Latin transla- 

 tion falsely ascribed to Apuleius (which existed also solely 

 in the time of St Augustine, who cites it in chs. 23 and 26 

 of Lib. viii. of his "City of God "), and which was published 

 with his works by Aldus in 1521, and Almenhorst at 

 Frankfort in 1621. That this is not from the hand of 

 our Hermes is at once apparent from its contents, which 

 are at variance with his genuine writings. It contains, 

 amongst other things, an eloquent address to the Nile, 

 wherein the author, as a prophet, laments in touching 

 terms the abolition of the ancient national religion of 

 Egypt that holy land and the approaching triumph of 

 Christianity; the devastation of the country and of its 

 sacred shrines, and destruction of the population. He 

 speaks of Isis and Osiris, and of the cult of animals, of 

 Jupiter Plutonius, of thirty 1 - six horoscopes, and of the 

 Pantomorphosis. Further, it contains a distinct defence 

 of the worship of statues of the gods formed by the hands 

 of men, and maintains that it is a great privilege granted 

 by God to men the power of making gods. That Lac- 

 tantius quotes this work more than once as of Hermes 

 himself, and applies his description of the calamities of 

 Egypt as if they were the afflictions to come upon the earth 

 in the last days, 1 is simply a proof of the uncritical judgment 

 of some of the Fathers as to chronology, and sometimes as to 

 exact authorship, which is well known and acknowledged. 

 It is plainly the production of an Alexandrian of the 

 Egyptian religion, who assumed the name and discipleship 

 of, and quoted from, Hermes for his own purposes, and 

 most probably lived some short time before the epoch of 

 Constantine. 



A second discourse, also found among the "Hermaica," is 



a portion of that called the " Sacred Book," denominated 



Ko>j XOO/AOU (Patrit, 276, Stobseus, " Physica," Meineke, L 



281), which Patrizzi corrected after Stobseus from a MS. 



1 Lactant., Divin. Instit., VII., 18. 



