The Texts · Corpus Hermeticum XVI

Definitions of Asclepius to King Ammon
(Corpus Hermeticum XVI)

TL;DR

Corpus Hermeticum XVI is a short Greek discourse in which Asclepius, the pupil of Hermes, sends a king a summary of his teaching: God is the One that is All, the Sun is the maker of the cosmos, and star-daimons govern everything in us except reason. It opens by warning that Greek translation will destroy its power, a warning that survives only in Greek.

Corpus Hermeticum XVI, titled in the manuscripts Definitions of Asclepius to King Ammon, is a short Greek letter-discourse in which Asclepius, the pupil of Hermes Trismegistus, sums up his teaching for a king: one God who is All, the Sun as the maker who orders heaven and earth, and star-daimons who rule everything in us except reason. It stands sixteenth in the Corpus Hermeticum, the first of the three treatises (XVI-XVIII) that come after the gap where XV used to be. It is best known for its opening: a warning that translating this teaching into Greek will ruin it, written in Greek.

Do not confuse it with the Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius, a different and probably older collection of aphorisms that survives mainly in Armenian. There Hermes teaches Asclepius; here Asclepius writes to a king.

Who speaks, and where it sits

The speaker is Asclepius, writing in the first person to “O King”. The king never answers, and Hermes appears only as an authority quoted at second hand: “Hermes, my master” in §1, and as the one who named Fate in §16. That makes CH XVI unusual. In most treatises Hermes himself teaches Tat or Asclepius; in CH XI and in Poimandres Mind teaches; here the pupil has become the teacher and writes to a ruler. The Greek title is Horoi Asklepiou pros Ammona basilea; the name Ammon is in the title only, while the text says simply “King”. In the manuscripts a later hand added a list of contents to the title: on God, matter, evil, fate, the sun, intelligible essence, divine essence, man, the economy of the pleroma, the seven stars, the man after the likeness. It matches the surviving text only loosely.

Treatise XVI opens the last group of the collection. XVII is a fragment of a dialogue with a king, about images (the speaker is Asclepius in Mead’s text; a corrector of one manuscript turned him into Tat); XVIII is a speech in praise of kings with no Hermes in it (see the treatise-by-treatise guide). No date specific to XVI is secure. Like most of the collection it is usually placed in the Roman imperial period, and it was known by the early 4th century, when Lactantius cited it (see Reception below).

Corpus Hermeticum XVI section by section

The section numbers are those of the critical edition by A. D. Nock and A.-J. Festugière (Corpus Hermeticum, vol. II, 1945; Greek text pp. 231-238 in the Paris printing of 1960), which divides the treatise into 19 sections. G.R.S. Mead’s public-domain translation (Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. II (1906), pp. 266-276) has only 18: his §4 covers §4-5 of the standard text and his §18 covers §18-19. Elsewhere the numbers match, except that the sentence calling impiety the greatest wrong against the gods ends Mead’s §10 but opens §11 in the standard text.

Sections	What happens
§1 · A summary for the king	Asclepius tells the king that this discourse is a summing up of all his others, written against the opinions of the many, and that it may even seem to contradict some of his own earlier discourses. He reports what his teacher Hermes often said, alone with him or with Tat present: these books will look simple and clear but hide their meaning, and they will become still more obscure “when, afterwards, the Greeks will want to turn our tongue into their own” (Mead).
§2 · Keep it out of Greek	In “our native tongue” the meaning of the words stays clear, because the very sound and the power of Egyptian names carry the effect of what is said. The king is asked to keep the discourse untranslated, so that such mysteries do not reach the Greeks. Greek is described as loose and showy speech good for argument; Greek philosophy is “the noise of words”, while “we use sounds full-filled with deeds”.
§3 · Invocation: the One that is All	The discourse proper begins by invoking God as lord, maker, father and encompasser of all, who being all is one and being one is all. The king is asked to keep this thought through the whole discourse: to separate the All from the One would destroy the All.
§4-5 · The earth as treasury; the Sun as demiurge	Springs of water and fire rising in the middle of the earth show three natures, fire, water and earth, hanging from one root; the earth is the storehouse of matter and receives substance from above (§4). In the same way the demiurge, “I mean the Sun”, binds heaven and earth, sending essence down and drawing matter up, and his energies reach down to the abyss (§5).
§6-7 · The Sun as charioteer	If there is an intelligible essence, it is the Sun’s substance, and its light is its receptacle; where it comes from, he alone knows. Here the Greek is damaged and cannot be translated with confidence (§6). The Sun itself is no conjecture: set in the middle and wreathed with the cosmos, it drives the cosmos like a good charioteer and keeps it from running wild; the reins are life, soul, spirit, immortality and becoming (§7).
§8-10 · Light above and below; the choirs of daimons	With the light sent upward the Sun feeds the immortal parts of the cosmos; with the light sent downward it gives life to water, earth and air and keeps living beings in births and changes (§8). Bodies last by changing: the immortal without dissolution, the mortal with it (§9). Around the Sun are many choirs of daimons, like armies, who carry out what the gods ordain through storms, earthquakes, famines and wars, against impiety (§10).
§11 · Gods, humans, daimons	Each has a task: the gods do good, humans are pious, the daimons answer for the gods. What people do through error, rashness, necessity (“which they call Fate”) or ignorance is not counted against them by the gods; only impiety is.
§12 · The Sun as preserver and nurse	As the intelligible world holds the sensible world and fills it with forms, so the Sun holds everything in the cosmos, brings all things to birth and strengthens them, and takes them back when they fail.
§13-15 · Daimons of the stars and the moment of birth	Under the Sun are ranged choirs of daimons, as many as the groups of stars, serving each star; good, bad or mixed, because a daimon’s essence is its activity (§13). They have authority over earthly affairs, for cities and nations and for each person, and shape souls to themselves, working through nerves, marrow, veins, arteries, the brain and the heart (§14). At birth each of us is taken over by the daimons on duty at that moment under each star; they enter the two irrational parts of the soul, but the rational part stays free of them, “designed to be receptacle of God” (§15).
§16 · The ray of God, and Fate	The few who have a ray shining in their rational part through the Sun are beyond the daimons’ reach; all others are led, soul and body, by the daimons. This whole earthly government, which the daimons run through our bodies, “Hermes has called Heimarmene”, Fate. A sentence in this section is corrupt in the Greek.
§17-18 · The chain of dependence	The intelligible world depends on God, the sensible on the intelligible; the Sun pours the stream of good, the work of making, through both. Around the Sun are eight spheres (the fixed stars, six planets and one around the earth); the daimons depend on the spheres, humans on the daimons (§17). So God is father of all, the Sun maker, the cosmos the instrument; the intelligible essence governs heaven, heaven the gods, the daimons under the gods govern humans (§18).
§19 · God making himself	God makes all things for himself, and all things are parts of God; so God is all, and in making all he makes himself. As God has no beginning or end, neither has his making. Here the text, as we have it, stops.

The headings are ours; the numbers and the content belong to the text. The shape is plain: a prologue about language (§1-2), an invocation of the One (§3), a long account of the Sun (§4-12), the daimons and Fate (§13-16), and a closing chain of dependence from God down to human beings (§17-19). Mead judged the treatise “evidently incomplete”: several topics in the added list of contents never appear.

Key lines, in public-domain translation

The quotations are from G.R.S. Mead’s translation (1906), made from the Greek. An earlier public-domain English version exists, in Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland’s The Virgin of the World (1885), but it was made with the help of Louis Ménard’s French translation, so we do not quote it; John Everard’s Divine Pymander of 1650 does not contain CH XVI. Section numbers are the standard ones, with Mead’s page.

“But we do not use words; but we use sounds full-filled with deeds.”
CH XVI §2, tr. G.R.S. Mead (1906), p. 267

“The reins are Life, and Soul, and Spirit, Deathlessness, and Genesis.”
CH XVI §7, the Sun as charioteer, tr. G.R.S. Mead (1906), p. 270

“For that the duty of the Gods is to give benefits; the duty of mankind is to give worship; the duty of the daimons is to give requital.”
CH XVI §11, tr. G.R.S. Mead (1906), p. 272

“For no one of the daimons or of Gods has any power against one Ray of God.”
CH XVI §16, tr. G.R.S. Mead (1906), p. 275

“Wherefore God is the Sire of all; the Sun’s [their] Demiurge; the Cosmos is the instrument of demiurgic operation.”
CH XVI §18, tr. G.R.S. Mead (1906), p. 276

Where readers disagree

Was it really translated from Egyptian? The prologue claims an Egyptian original and warns against Greek, yet the treatise survives only in Greek and writes like the other Greek treatises. Mead (1906) called the claim of translation “a literary fiction”: the Greek “clearly is not” a translation. He thought the author was drawing on a living tradition that Hermes’ teaching was Egyptian and had been “interpreted” into Greek ways of thought. A modern Polish translator, Aneta Tylak (2014), notes, following Roman Bugaj, that although Coptic Hermetic texts have been found, there is no evidence that the treatises of the collection were written in Coptic. Endre Ádám Hamvas (2026) reads the prologue as a strategy: by stressing an Egyptian origin, Hermetic authors kept the prestige of the teaching and claimed that it loses its divine power in any translation. The idea itself was not unique: Iamblichus argued that sacred names do not keep their power when translated and blamed the Greeks’ love of novelty (On the Mysteries VII.5), and he tells of a prophet Bitys who explained Hermes’ teaching for “King Ammon” from hieroglyphic writings found at Sais (VIII.5). Mead took traditions of this kind as the model the author of CH XVI was imitating.

Is the prologue by the same hand? Mead noticed a contradiction inside the treatise. In §6 the intelligible essence is mentioned almost dismissively (“if there be an Essence which the mind alone can grasp”), but §17-18 build the whole system on the intelligible and sensible worlds. He felt “almost compelled” to conclude that the introduction (§1-2) is by another hand and that the discourse proper begins at §3. Tylak also treats §3 as the start of the proper content. Neither claim can be settled from the text alone: the manuscripts give §1-19 as one piece.

Is the Sun God? Richard Reitzenstein (1904), as reported by Mead, read the treatise as worship of the Sun as the all-god, and linked the ray-crowned charioteer of §7 to images of the sun-god of the Aurelian period, the imperial god of the 3rd century, which would suggest a late date. Mead objected twice: the text itself separates God the father from the Sun the maker (§18), and the image of the Sun as a charioteer is much older than Aurelian, so it cannot date the treatise. Mead did agree on one point: the Sun as demiurge is what sets this treatise apart from the rest of the collection. In Poimandres the maker is a second Mind brought forth by God (CH I.9); here the maker is the visible Sun.

What do the daimons do? The daimons are tied to the stars and to the moment of birth, act on the two irrational parts of the soul, and run the earthly order that “Hermes has called Heimarmene” (§16). The rational part is free of them, and the few who receive a ray of God through the Sun are free entirely. This is a strong statement of astral fate with a narrow exit, close to Poimandres, where the government of the seven planetary rulers is called Fate (CH I.9). Translators also differ on the daimons’ task in §11: “to give requital” in Mead, “to come to aid” in Tylak’s Polish version.

Damaged passages. §6 is corrupt: Mead called any translation “hopeless” and reported that Reitzenstein found two gaps in the Greek; Tylak marks the passage with cruxes. A sentence in §16 about reason and love is also marked corrupt. In §12 Mead has the Sun take failing things “in His arms again”, where Tylak’s version has the Sun receive the dead into his house. Any reading of these lines is partly editorial.

Are these really “Definitions”? Mead found the manuscript title “very inappropriate”: the treatise is a continuous discourse, not a list of definitions. Lactantius, the earliest known reader, calls it the finished (in Latin, perfect) discourse that Asclepius “wrote to the king”. Mead kept the traditional title and gave Lactantius’ second, because The Perfect Discourse is also the title of the Asclepius. The added list of contents is, according to Reitzenstein as reported by Mead, the work of a Byzantine scribe.

Reception

Late antiquity. Lactantius, in Divine Institutes II.15 (chapter 16 in Fletcher’s English translation; composed about 304-311), writes that Hermes taught that piety protects against evil daimons and fate, and that “Asclepius also, his disciple”, set out the same idea more fully “in that finished discourse which he wrote to the king” (tr. William Fletcher, 1886). It is the earliest secure trace of CH XVI, and a Christian one: Lactantius used it to show that the Hermetic writers knew the daimons as enemies of humankind.

Renaissance. CH XVI was not in Marsilio Ficino’s Latin Pimander (translated 1463, printed 1471), because his Greek manuscript, Laurentianus 71.33, stops at XIV. Lodovico Lazzarelli translated XVI-XVIII into Latin from another manuscript after 1481, and Symphorien Champier printed that version at Lyon in 1507 as the Diffinitiones of Asclepius: the first time CH XVI appeared in Latin. The Greek was first printed by Adrien Turnèbe in Paris in 1554, with XVI-XVIII as Aesculapii definitiones. Francesco Patrizi’s edition of 1591, according to Mead, ran XVI and XVII together as “Definitions of Asclepius, Book I” and replaced the added list of contents with the title “Of the Sun and Daimons”. John Everard’s English Divine Pymander (1650) has no XVI: in place of XVI-XVIII it prints three other pieces, which Mead identified as excerpts preserved by Stobaeus (see The Stobaean Fragments).

Modern. The first English version appeared in Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland’s The Virgin of the World (London, 1885) as “The Definitions of Asclepios”, with XVII and XVIII in its later parts, made with the help of Louis Ménard’s French translation. Mead’s 1906 translation, made from the Greek, added a commentary on Egyptian tradition, Valentinus and the Sun. A recent study reads the prologue as evidence of how Hermetic authors gave Greek texts an Egyptian origin (Hamvas 2026). Read that way, the warning against Greek does not point to a lost Egyptian original behind the treatise: it is itself part of a Greek composition, as Mead already argued.

Translations to read

Free, public domain: G.R.S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. II (1906), “The Definitions of Asclepius unto King Ammon”, pp. 266-276, commentary pp. 277-284. Mead heads it “Corpus Hermeticum (XVI.)” and gives Lactantius’ title, “The Perfect Sermon of Asclepius unto the King”, as a second title.
Free, older: Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland, The Virgin of the World (1885), “The Definitions of Asclepios” (part I is CH XVI; the later parts give XVII and XVIII), made with the help of Ménard’s French version.
Not in Everard: John Everard’s Divine Pymander (1650) lacks CH XVI.
Standard modern: Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica (Cambridge, 1992), “Corpus Hermeticum XVI”, pp. 58-61, with notes; the Greek with a French translation is Nock and Festugière, vol. II (1945). The Way of Hermes by Clement Salaman and colleagues (1999) includes XVI in a readable modern version.
Polish, open access: Aneta Tylak, “Corpus Hermeticum XVI”, Collectanea Philologica 17 (2014), pp. 29-36, a translation from Nock’s Greek with a short commentary.

Read it after Poimandres: the two texts give different answers to the same questions, who made the world and who governs fate.

Key facts
Position	Treatise XVI of the Corpus Hermeticum, first of the group XVI-XVIII after the missing XV
Greek title	Horoi Asklepiou pros Ammona basilea (Definitions of Asclepius to King Ammon)
Speaker	Asclepius, writing to a king; Hermes quoted as his teacher
Length	19 sections (Nock-Festugière); 18 in Mead 1906
Theme	The One that is All; the Sun as demiurge; daimons of the stars and Fate
Earliest witness	Lactantius, Divine Institutes II.15 (ch. 16 in Fletcher; c. 304-311): “the finished discourse which he wrote to the king”
First in Latin	Lazzarelli’s version, printed by Champier at Lyon in 1507; not in Ficino
Free translation	Mead 1906, vol. II, pp. 266-276; earlier, Kingsford and Maitland 1885 (with help from Ménard’s French); not in Everard 1650

Fair questions

What is Corpus Hermeticum XVI about?

Asclepius sends a king a summary of his teaching: God is the One that is All, the Sun is the maker who orders heaven and earth, choirs of daimons tied to the stars govern earthly life and the irrational soul, and only reason, lit by a ray of God, is free of them. That earthly government is what Hermes called Fate.

Was Corpus Hermeticum XVI translated from Egyptian?

The text says it was written in Egyptian and should never be put into Greek, but it survives only in Greek and no Egyptian original is known. Mead (1906) already called the claim a literary fiction, and a recent study (Hamvas 2026) reads it as a way of giving the text Egyptian authority.

Is it the same as the Definitions of Hermes to Asclepius?

No. The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius is a separate collection of aphorisms, surviving mainly in Armenian, in which Hermes teaches Asclepius. CH XVI is a Greek discourse by Asclepius to a king.

Does Corpus Hermeticum XVI worship the Sun as God?

Not quite. It calls God the father of all and the Sun the maker (§18). Reitzenstein read it as sun worship of the 3rd century; Mead answered that the text keeps God and the Sun distinct.

Where can I read it for free?

In G.R.S. Mead’s Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. II (1906), pp. 266-276, scanned at the Internet Archive. An older English version, made with the help of a French translation, is in Kingsford and Maitland’s The Virgin of the World (1885). Everard’s Divine Pymander (1650) does not include it. Mead numbers 18 sections where modern editions have 19.

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