The Texts

Asclepius

Antiquity knew it as the Logos teleios, the Perfect Discourse: Lactantius, writing in the early fourth century, quotes its Greek under that title (for example Divine Institutes IV.6 and VII.18). Apart from such quotations the Greek is lost. What survives complete is an old Latin version in 41 chapters, copied among the philosophical works of Apuleius, though most scholars now doubt that he made it (Gall 2021). Until Ficino translated the Greek Corpus Hermeticum in 1463, it was the only philosophical Hermetic dialogue Latin readers had. A Coptic translation of chapters 21-29, found at Nag Hammadi, lets scholars check the Latin against something closer to the original: the Latin translator, it turns out, took liberties.

A great miracle

Magnum miraculum est homo: “a great miracle is man” (chapter 6). The Asclepius’ declaration that the human being bridges the divine and material worlds was quoted, eleven centuries after Augustine read it, near the start of Pico della Mirandola’s celebrated Oration, right after Abdala the Saracen. Renaissance humanism’s signature sentence has a Hermetic pedigree. The same intuition, that the levels of the world answer one another, later travelled as the slogan as above, so below.

The scandal: making gods

The text’s most notorious passages (chapters 23-24 and 37-38) describe Egyptian temple craft: drawing celestial powers into cult statues so that they become ensouled, prophesying gods. Around 417, in book VIII of the City of God, Augustine attacked these passages and quoted chapters 23-24 and 37 at length, so those lines survive twice: in the Latin manuscripts, which travelled with the philosophical works of Apuleius, and in the testimony of their enemy.

The lament

And then the prophecy (chapters 24-26): a time will come when Egypt’s gods abandon it, when the most religious of lands is left a land of tombs, its rites mocked, its script forgotten, until God purges the world by flood, fire, war and plague and restores it. The prophecy is older than the Christian destruction of the temples it is often read into: the Coptic version from Nag Hammadi has it, in a codex usually dated to the fourth century, and Lactantius had already quoted its ending in Greek early in that century (Quack 2021). What it answers is disputed. Garth Fowden (1986), as Quack summarizes him, read it as Egyptian culture’s response to creeping Hellenization rather than to any single event; step 03 describes that shrinking temple world. Joachim Quack (2021) traces its motifs to older Egyptian prophecies of chaos and renewal, above all the Oracle of the Potter, which circulated in Greek, and thinks it draws on memories of foreign rule reaching back to the Hyksos rather than on current events. The statues return in chapters 37-38, where the earthly gods are said to draw their quality from herbs, stones and spices holding a divine power: nearly the same stones, herbs, animals and aromatics from which theurgy, in Iamblichus’ De mysteriis (V.23), composes a receptacle fit for a god.

Chapter by chapter: what survives where

The Latin is the only complete text, but some chapters can also be read in Coptic or Greek, and there the Latin translator’s changes show. The numbers are the standard division into 41 chapters, used by Mead (1906) and by Gall’s edition (2021). The last column lists the witnesses we checked; it is not a full critical apparatus.

Where to read it

Mead, Scott, Nock-Festugière and Copenhaver all print the Asclepius after the last Greek treatise, and Everard’s Divine Pymander took it in only with its second edition (1657); the concordance of Corpus Hermeticum editions gives its place in each.

Key facts

Also called	Logos teleios, the Perfect Discourse (Lactantius)
Speakers	Hermes Trismegistus teaches Asclepius; Tat and Ammon listen (ch. 1)
Setting	The sanctuary of an Egyptian temple (ch. 1)
Length	41 chapters
Original	Greek, lost apart from quotations; known to Lactantius in the early 4th century
Survives as	Latin version (complete); Coptic translation of ch. 21-29 and of the closing prayer (Nag Hammadi Codex VI); Greek quotations, and the prayer in a magical papyrus
Latin translator	Unknown; copied with the works of Apuleius, whose authorship most scholars reject
Famous line	Magnum miraculum est homo (ch. 6)
Hostile witness	Augustine, City of God VIII.23-26 (on the statue passages)

Fair questions

Why is a pagan text preserved in Latin?

It travelled in Latin manuscripts alongside the philosophical works of Apuleius, to whom it was long attributed (most scholars now doubt he translated it), and its critics quoted it at length. The full text survived in that company; the controversy kept it famous.

When was the Asclepius written?

The Greek original cannot be dated exactly; it existed by the early fourth century, when Lactantius quoted it as the Logos teleios. The Latin version existed by about 417, when Augustine quoted it in book VIII of the City of God. Its translator is unknown.

Is the Asclepius part of the Corpus Hermeticum?

No. The Corpus Hermeticum is a collection of seventeen Greek treatises; the Asclepius is a separate work that survives complete only in Latin. Editors print them together: Nock and Festugière put it in volume II of their Corpus Hermeticum (1945), and Copenhaver translates both in his Hermetica (1992). Treatise XVI of the Corpus, the Definitions of Asclepius to King Ammon, is a different text.

Is the 'apocalypse' a prophecy?

It is written as one, and it is older than the Christian destruction of the temples it is often read into: the Coptic version from Nag Hammadi has it in a codex usually dated to the fourth century, and Lactantius had already quoted its Greek early in that century. What it responds to is disputed: Garth Fowden (1986), as Quack summarizes him, reads it as a reaction to Hellenization, and Joachim Quack (2021) as a reuse of older Egyptian prophecies of chaos and renewal, such as the Oracle of the Potter.

Where should I read it?

For study in English, Copenhaver's Hermetica (1992), with notes; for the newest text, Stefani's critical edition (2019) and the English of The Latin Hermes in Translation (2026). Free: Gall's Latin and German edition (2021, open access) and Mead's English of 1906, public domain but made before the critical text.

Listen & watch

• SHWEP 105: The Asclepius and Korê Kosmouscholarly walkthrough

Sources & further reading

• Nock, A. D. (ed.) & Festugière, A.-J. (tr.), Corpus Hermeticum, t. II: Traités XIII-XVIII, Asclepius (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, Collection des Universités de France, 1945): critical edition of the Latin text.
• Copenhaver, B. P., Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): standard English translation, with notes.
• Mahé, J.-P., Hermès en Haute-Égypte, t. II: Le fragment du Discours parfait et les Définitions hermétiques arméniennes (NH VI, 8-8a) (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi 7, 1982): the Coptic fragment (= Asclepius 21-29) set synoptically against the Latin. This is the edition that shows where the Latin translator took liberties.
• Litwa, M. D. (tr.), Hermetica II: The Excerpts of Stobaeus, Papyrus Fragments, and Ancient Testimonies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018): testimonies about Hermes from thirty-eight ancient authors.
• Clarke, E. C., Dillon, J. M. and Hershbell, J. P. (tr.), Iamblichus: De mysteriis (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, Writings from the Greco-Roman World 4, 2003): English translation with introduction and notes, alongside the Greek text of Édouard Des Places. At V.23 the theurgic art composes a pure receptacle for the gods out of stones, plants, animals and aromatic substances.
• Augustine, De civitate Dei VIII.23-26: the attack on the god-making passages. Augustine’s quotations preserve the statue passages a second time, independently of the manuscripts.
• Pico della Mirandola, G., Oratio de hominis dignitate (written 1486): quotes the great-miracle passage near its opening, right after Abdala the Saracen.
• Fowden, G., The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; reprinted Princeton University Press, 1993): the Egyptian setting of the Hermetica.
• Bull, C. H., The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus: The Egyptian Priestly Figure as a Teacher of Hellenized Wisdom (Leiden: Brill, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 186, 2018).
• Gall, D. (ed.), Die göttliche Weisheit des Hermes Trismegistos: Pseudo-Apuleius, Asclepius (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, SAPERE 38, 2021; open access, DOI): Gall’s introduction, pp. 3-28 (speakers, setting, outline of the chapters, the case against Apuleius as translator); J. F. Quack, “Der Asclepius im Kontext der apokalyptischen Literatur”, pp. 265-282 (the date of the lament and its Egyptian and Jewish parallels); J. F. Quack, “Die koptische Version des Asclepius”, pp. 309-331.
• Lactantius, Divine Institutes IV.6 and VII.18 (Greek of Asclepius 8 and 26) and VI.25 (Asclepius 41), tr. William Fletcher, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7 (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886); online at New Advent: book IV, book VII.
• Augustine, City of God VIII.23-26 in English: book VIII at New Advent. Date: Christian Tornau, “Augustine of Hippo”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2019, revised 2024): begun in 412, finished in 426, book VIII about 417.
• Mead, G.R.S., Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. II (London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906): p. 342 n. 1 (John Lydus, On the Months IV.7, quotes the Greek of chapter 19), p. 389 n. 1 (Lactantius, Divine Institutes VI.25, on chapter 41) and p. 391 (list of the Greek quotations).