The Latin Asclepius: the Perfect Discourse and the lament for Egypt

Throughout the Latin Middle Ages, before Ficino translated the Corpus Hermeticum, the West knew Hermes Trismegistus mainly through a single text: the Asclepius. It is the Latin version of a lost Greek treatise entitled Logos teleios, the Perfect Discourse. In dialogue form, Hermes instructs his disciples Asclepius, Tat and Ammon on the nature of God, the world and humankind.

A text that survived thanks to Apuleius

The Greek original was probably written in the second or third century AD. The Latin translation, by an unknown author, very likely dates from the fourth century. The text survived because in medieval manuscripts it was copied together with the philosophical works of Apuleius of Madauros, to whom it was long attributed. Scholars today rule out Apuleius as author, but it was precisely this association that saved it.

Of the Greek original some quotations remain in Christian authors such as Lactantius, who read it at the beginning of the fourth century and found in it confirmation of the Christian faith. A modern discovery has added important evidence: in 1945, among the Coptic codices of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, a Coptic excerpt of the same treatise was found in Codex VI.

Man, a great miracle

One of the most famous passages of the Asclepius opens with the words «a great miracle is man, O Asclepius». The text describes the human being as an intermediate creature, bound to the gods by mind and to the world by body, able to know and to care for creation. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola quoted this very phrase at the start of his Oration on the dignity of man, in 1486.

The animated statues and Augustine's verdict

Another passage describes how the ancient Egyptians were supposedly able to draw divine forces into statues, making them capable of foretelling and acting. Augustine of Hippo, in the City of God, discusses this passage at length and condemns it as an idolatrous practice tied to demons. His criticism made the Asclepius a well-known but suspect text in the eyes of medieval theologians.

The theme of the animated statues ran through the whole later history of magic. In the Renaissance it was taken up and discussed by authors who questioned the relationship between images, stars and natural forces, and it contributed to the idea that Egyptian wisdom held power over consecrated objects. The passage, moreover, reworked in philosophical terms genuine Egyptian traditions, such as the rites for consecrating cult statues, including the ceremony of the opening of the mouth.

The prophecy on Egypt

The most dramatic passage is an apocalypse. Hermes announces that a time will come when the gods abandon Egypt, the temples are deserted, religion is forbidden and the land, once an image of heaven, falls into darkness. Many modern readers have seen in it an echo of the crisis of traditional cults in late antique Egypt. Augustine too quoted this prophecy, interpreting it as an unwitting foreshadowing of the Christian triumph.

The Asclepius is thus a text with a long and layered history: written in Greek, read in Latin, saved under a false name, condemned and admired. Its uninterrupted presence in medieval libraries explains why, when Ficino brought the rest of Hermetism to light, European readers were already prepared to welcome it. It is still one of the most translated Hermetic texts today, precisely because of its long presence in Latin culture.