PREFACE. ix 



Trismegistus." Further, S. Augustine 1 relates, "He, the 

 fifth Mercury (as Lactantius had thought also), and his 

 friend Esculapius (or Asclepius, grandson of the first) were 

 men, and became gods, Mercurius and ^Esculapius, after 

 the Greek fashion." Cyril of Alexandria (" Contr. Julian.," 

 i. 30a, circa 412), speaks of Hermes in general thus: 

 " This Hermes then, him of Egypt, although being initia- 

 tor (reXsffrfo), and having presided at the fanes of idols, is 

 always found mindful of the things of Moses, l&c.; and 

 made mention of him in his own writings, which, being 

 composed for the Athenians, are called ' Hermaica,' fifteen 

 books." And subsequently, " I speak of Hermes, him 

 having sojourned, third, in Egypt " (Lib. v., 1762>). 2 



The majority of the Fathers, in their uncritical mode, j 

 even Lactantius himself, confounded the original Hermes 

 with our author, in the same way that they ascribed to 

 the Sybilline verses a far too high antiquity;, and the later 

 Fathers, moreover, especially Lactantius, made no distinc- 

 tion between the genuine works of our Hermes and others 

 which falsely bear his name; some of them, as, for in-* 

 stance, " Asclepius," having been written at least a century 

 later ; and those, as, for instance, " The Sacred Book " and 

 the Dialogue between Isis and Horus (Stobseus, " Physica,' 

 928, 1070, edit. Meineke, i. 281, 342), to which it is impos- 

 sible to assign a date, are all indiscriminately ascribed 

 to the same Hermes, although it is absolutely certain 

 that the author of " Poemandres " never can have written 

 them. 



What is strange is, that several of the learned editors of 

 the works of our Hermes consider him to have lived before 

 Moses. Vergicius, in his preface to the edition printed at 

 Paris by Turnebus in 1554, states this. Flussas (1574), 

 after discussion, leaves the question as to his age undeter- 

 mined; but Patricius (Patrizzi), in his "Nova de Universis 

 Philosophia," printed at Ferrara in 1591, and at Venice 



1 " City of God," viii. 23, 26. 



2 See the extracts from Cyril of Alexandria, post, Part III., and the 

 note from Pietschmann there. 



I 



