When people speak of Hermetism they immediately think of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Greek collection rediscovered in the fifteenth century. But throughout the Latin Middle Ages the West knew Hermes Trismegistus mainly through another text: the Asclepius. Brief, dense and at times obscure, this dialogue fed for centuries the image of an ancient Egyptian wisdom.
A Greek text surviving in Latin
The Asclepius is the Latin translation of a Greek work entitled Logos teleios, the "Perfect Discourse". The Greek original is lost, apart from a few fragments quoted by ancient authors. Part of the text also survives in Coptic translation among the Nag Hammadi codices, discovered in Egypt in 1945, and comparison with this version has helped clarify how the Latin treated the original.
The Latin translation circulated together with the philosophical works of Apuleius of Madauros and was long attributed to him. Scholars now rule out Apuleius as the translator, but this association explains its long survival in medieval libraries.
The form of the dialogue
The text presents itself as a dialogue between Hermes Trismegistus and his disciple Asclepius, in the presence of Tat and Ammon. It takes place in a temple, in a hushed atmosphere, and closes with a prayer of thanksgiving. The themes follow one another without strict order: the nature of God, the cosmos, man, matter, fate, religion.
Man, a great miracle
One of the most famous passages concerns the dignity of man. Hermes states that man is a great miracle, a being of twofold nature: in one part divine, in the other mortal, placed between heaven and earth with the task of contemplating heavenly things and caring for earthly ones. This idea enjoyed enormous success in the Renaissance: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola opens his celebrated oration on the dignity of man by recalling precisely this expression attributed to Hermes.
The animated statues
The most debated passage is the one about the statues of the gods. According to the text, the ancient Egyptians discovered the art of "making gods", drawing into statues, through rites, herbs, stones and perfumes, divine powers able to act, to foretell and to protect. Man, created by God, would thus in turn become a creator of divine images.
This passage had a complex history:
- Augustine of Hippo discussed and criticised it in The City of God, seeing in it a justification of idolatry;
- in the Middle Ages it helped give Hermes an ambiguous reputation, as both a sage and a teacher of pagan cults;
- in the Renaissance it became one of the key texts for those reflecting on the magic of images.
The lament for Egypt
Another famous section is the so-called "apocalypse" or lament. Hermes announces that a time will come when Egypt, regarded as the image of heaven and the temple of the world, will be abandoned by the gods. Foreigners will occupy the land, religion will be forgotten and mocked, and the Nile will fill with blood. Yet after this decline, the text says, God will restore the world to its original beauty.
This page, written at a time when traditional Egyptian cults were in decline, expresses nostalgia for a tradition that felt itself threatened. Augustine interpreted it as an unwitting prophecy of the end of paganism.
The great philosophical themes
Beyond its most spectacular passages, the Asclepius contains reflections that place it in the philosophical world of late antiquity:
- God is one and all, without a name or bearer of every name;
- the cosmos is living, beautiful and a divine work;
- matter is at once principle and receptacle of forms;
- true religion consists in the contemplation and praise of God.
A long afterlife
Precisely because it was the only Hermetic text available in Latin for many centuries, the Asclepius was quoted by theologians, philosophers and authors on magic. When Marsilio Ficino translated the Corpus Hermeticum in the fifteenth century, the Asclepius was often printed together with his translation, and the two texts were read as parts of a single wisdom.
In short
- The Asclepius is the Latin translation of the Greek Logos teleios, the "Perfect Discourse".
- It was long attributed to Apuleius, who was not, however, its translator.
- Part of the text survives in Coptic among the Nag Hammadi codices.
- It is famous for the idea of man as a great miracle, for the animated statues and for the lament for Egypt.
- Augustine discussed it in The City of God, and in the Renaissance it was read alongside the Corpus Hermeticum.
