The Texts · Corpus Hermeticum XVII

The Fragment on Images: Tat and the King
(Corpus Hermeticum XVII)

TL;DR

Corpus Hermeticum XVII is the surviving end of a lost dialogue: a teacher, Tat in the Greek as edited, shows a king that mirror images and the forms in bodies are bodiless, that the intelligible world is reflected in the sensible one, and that statues of the gods should therefore be worshipped. Mead (1906) and Scott (1924) are free to read in scans. The translations differ on who speaks and on where the statues’ forms come from.

On this page: what it is · the fragment, part by part · part map · translations compared · why worship statues · where to read it

What Corpus Hermeticum XVII is

It is not a treatise but the last lines of one. In the manuscripts these lines follow the end of CH XVI, the Definitions of Asclepius to King Ammon, without a break, yet they belong to a different dialogue whose beginning and middle are lost, presumably because leaves fell out of the manuscript from which all surviving copies descend (Scott, Hermetica, II, 1925, pp. 457-458). Mead blamed the same accident, the loss of one or more quires (Thrice-Greatest Hermes, II, 1906, p. 286). Mead, Scott and Reitzenstein all open it with a row of asterisks and a sentence already under way.

It has no title. Richard Reitzenstein, whose edition of 1904 gave it the number XVII (see the guide to the treatises), listed it in his contents as “Tats Lehre”, Tat’s teaching (Poimandres, contents; text on p. 354). Mead supplied a title in brackets, “[Of Asclepius to the King]” (II, p. 285); Walter Scott printed only “Libellus XVII” (Hermetica, I, 1924, p. 273), and Brian Copenhaver “Corpus Hermeticum XVII” (Hermetica, 1992, p. 62).

A teacher speaks with a king. Scott took the king to be “probably Ammon” and the teacher to be Tat, Hermes’ son, here acting as his successor after Hermes has gone up to heaven. That idea, he argued, was not likely to arise until a body of Hermes-to-Tat dialogues already existed, so the piece must be one of the later Hermetica, “probably written in the third century A.D.” (II, p. 458). Nothing names its author or place. It was not in Marsilio Ficino’s Latin of 1471, which “contains only Corp. I-XIV” (Scott, I, p. 31), nor in John Everard’s English of 1650.

The fragment, part by part

The whole text is thirteen lines of Greek in Reitzenstein’s edition (p. 354, lines 11-23). The five parts below are ours, for reference; the editions number nothing inside it. They paraphrase; the quotations come further down.

1 · Mirror images. The teacher, mid-argument, tells the king that if he thinks about it, even bodies have bodiless counterparts. Asked what he means, he points to the images seen in mirrors: they do not seem to be bodies. The king agrees.

2 · Forms in bodies. There are other bodiless things too: the forms (ideai) that show themselves in bodies, in living things and in lifeless ones alike. The king agrees again.

3 · Reflections. So bodiless things are reflected in bodies, and the intelligible world, the world known by the mind, is reflected in the sensible world, the one known by the senses. The Greek adds the reverse direction, bodies reflected in the bodiless; editors disagree whether that clause belongs.

4 · Statues. Therefore, the teacher concludes, the king should worship the statues (agalmata), because they too hold forms that come from the intelligible world.

5 · Adjourned. The king rises, addresses the teacher as “prophet”, says it is time to see to his guests, and promises to take up the next part of the discussion of the gods the following day. Nothing of that sequel survives.

Part map: where to find each line

Pages checked in the scans. Scott prints the Greek on even pages and the English on odd ones; Reitzenstein prints the Greek only, all on p. 354; Copenhaver has the whole on p. 62.

Part	Mead 1906 (II)	Scott 1924 (I), Greek; English
1 mirrors	p. 285	p. 272; p. 273
2 forms	p. 286	p. 272; p. 273
3 reflections	p. 286	p. 272; p. 273
4 statues	p. 286	p. 272; p. 273
5 adjourned	p. 286	p. 274; p. 275

Where the translations part company

For so short a text the free English versions disagree a good deal. Four points, with quotations checked against the scans.

1. Who is teaching (§1). Reitzenstein’s Greek has the king address the teacher as Tat. His apparatus notes that a second hand in one manuscript, B, wrote “Asclepius” in its place and added the speakers’ names (1904, p. 354). Mead’s translation names Asclepius, as that hand does, while his note describes the change the other way round, as a corrector turning Asclepius into Tat (II, p. 285 n. 2). The table of speakers in the site’s guide to the treatises records both readings.

Kingsford and Maitland 1885: “It is true, Tat, says the King; thou hast a marvellous fancy!” (p. 107)
Mead 1906: “It is so, O Asclepius; thou thinkest like a God!” (p. 285)
Scott 1924: “Yes, Tat, it is so,” said the King (p. 273)

The same lines show a second difference: Scott struck out the king’s compliment, arguing that there is “nothing specially ‘divine’” in seeing that a mirror image is not a body (II, p. 459).

2. One direction or two (§3). The Greek says bodiless things are reflected in bodies and bodies in bodiless things. Scott kept only the first and bracketed the second as “a meaningless addition”, since bodies cannot be reflected in the intelligible as in a mirror (II, p. 460).

Kingsford and Maitland 1885: “the Sensible World and the Ideal World reflect each other” (p. 107)
Mead 1906: “reflexions of things bodiless on bodies, and of bodies too upon things bodiless” (p. 286)
Scott 1924: “the intelligible Kosmos is reflected in the sensible Kosmos” (p. 273)

3. Forms from which world (§4). The manuscripts divide on the last word of the argument. Manuscripts O and R and the first printed edition (Turnèbe, 1554) read “sensible”; the second hand in B, followed by Reitzenstein, reads “intelligible” (Reitzenstein, p. 354; Scott, I, p. 273, apparatus to line 26, gives it simply as B).

Kingsford and Maitland 1885: “they also are reflective forms of the Sensible World” (p. 107)
Mead 1906: “they too have their forms as from the World Intelligible” (p. 286)
Scott 1924: “forms which come from the intelligible Kosmos” (p. 273)

This is the row that bears on the argument. With “intelligible”, a statue is a body that carries a reflection of the divine world, and that is the reason for worshipping it that Scott’s notes spell out (II, p. 460). With “sensible”, as we read it, that reason is not stated, and the instruction rests only on the two-way reflection of the sentence before.

4. What is worshipped (§4). The Greek word is agalmata, the usual word for statues of gods. Mead: “pay worship to the images, O King” (p. 286); Kingsford and Maitland: “Adore, then, the sacred images” (p. 107); Scott spells it out: “worship the statues of the gods” (p. 273).

Why worship statues: the argument and its background

The fragment ends on an instruction, so its last topic, Scott inferred, must have been whether people ought to worship statues of the gods. That question, he wrote, was forced on pagans “in the third century especially” by Christian attacks on idolatry, though Dio Chrysostom and Maximus of Tyre had discussed it earlier (II, p. 458). He suggested that the author may have written in answer to those attacks, as the “god-making” passages of the Latin Asclepius defend the old cults; on statues he points to chapters 24a and 37 (II, p. 460).

The tools are Platonic. Mirror images are among Plato’s examples of a likeness in the Sophist, where images in water and mirrors head the list of eidôla (Scott, II, p. 459, citing 239d; Mead, II, p. 285 n. 1, cites other passages). Scott reads the argument this way: we cannot see the intelligible realities, but we see their reflections in material things, so bodies are mirrors of the intelligible, and a cult statue, being a body, reflects a living divine being (II, pp. 459-460).

He set two parallels beside it, both paraphrased here. Plutarch, in On Isis and Osiris 76 (382 A; 77 in Parthey’s numbering, which Scott uses), defends Egyptian animal cults by treating the animals as clearer mirrors of the divine, formed by nature; the contrast with statues made by hand is Scott’s gloss. Plotinus, in Enneads IV.3.11, says the ancient sages who built temples and statues understood that anything made in imitation of it can catch some share of soul, the way a mirror catches a form (Scott, II, pp. 460-461).

The king’s word for the teacher, prophêtês, may mean only an inspired teacher; Scott noted that it was also the title of Egyptian priests of a certain grade, so the author may have meant Tat to be such a priest (II, p. 461). The closing verb, theologein, shows that the whole lost dialogue was a discussion of the gods, and that more were planned (II, p. 458).

Later readers have read much into these lines. Mead linked the statues to the Egyptian ka and saw them as a “straight path” between earth and heaven (II, p. 287). Anna Kingsford thought the fragment “written in a spirit of mirth”, with Tat “quibbling with the King”, though with an undercurrent of occult meaning (1885, p. 107 n.). The site’s guide is more cautious: the fragment is “too short to carry a conclusion”, and almost any reading of it is supplied by the reader (entry XVII). What it does show is one late Hermetic author giving a philosophical reason for a temple practice.

Reitzenstein argued that XVI and XVII belonged to the collection from the start, because its editor’s plan needed them: in it the pupils of Hermes carry his teaching to King Ammon (1904, p. 366).

Where to read Corpus Hermeticum XVII free

Free scans at the Internet Archive, except the last two, which are in copyright. Links checked 4 November 2026; full details under Sources.

Mead, 1906, vol. II, pp. 285-287, with commentary: scan, opened at p. 285. Speaker given as Asclepius.
Scott, 1924-1925, Greek and English, vol. I, pp. 272-275 (scan); notes, vol. II, pp. 457-461 (scan). An emended text; the notes say what was changed.
Kingsford and Maitland, 1885, The Virgin of the World, “Definitions of Asclepios”, Part II, p. 107: scan. A free version made before the critical texts.
Reitzenstein, 1904, Poimandres, Greek with apparatus, p. 354: scan.
Nock and Festugière, 1945, vol. II (Les Belles Lettres), critical Greek text and French: BnF record.
Copenhaver, 1992, Hermetica, p. 62: chapter page on Cambridge Core. Speaker given as Tat.

Not in John Everard’s Divine Pymander (1650): none of its seventeen books contains this text (Wellcome Collection copy).

Key facts
Position	Sixteenth of the 17 Greek treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum (there is no XV), between XVI and XVIII; a fragment, not a complete treatise
Title	None in the manuscripts; Mead 1906: [Of Asclepius to the King]; Reitzenstein 1904: Tats Lehre
Speakers	A teacher and a king: Tat in Reitzenstein, Scott and Copenhaver; Asclepius in Mead. The king is probably Ammon (Scott)
Length	13 lines of Greek (Reitzenstein 1904, p. 354); Mead 1906, vol. II, pp. 285-286
Key terms	ideai, forms; agalmata, statues of gods; intelligible and sensible world
Date	Unknown; Scott: probably 3rd century AD (1925, II, p. 458)

Fair questions

What is Corpus Hermeticum XVII about?

Statues of the gods. In a few lines a teacher argues that bodiless things, such as images in mirrors and the forms seen in bodies, are reflected in bodies, so that the intelligible world shows itself in the sensible one; a statue, too, carries forms from the intelligible world, so the king should worship statues. The rest of the dialogue is lost.

Who speaks in Corpus Hermeticum XVII, Tat or Asclepius?

Tat, in the Greek as Reitzenstein (1904) printed it, and in Scott (1924) and Copenhaver (1992). A second hand in one manuscript wrote Asclepius instead; Mead’s translation (1906) and his title “[Of Asclepius to the King]” name Asclepius. The listener is a king, probably Ammon according to Scott.

Does Corpus Hermeticum XVII defend the worship of statues?

Yes: it ends with the instruction to worship them. Scott (1925) thought the author may have written in reply to Christian attacks on idolatry, which pressed pagans on this question especially in the third century, and compared the god-making passages of the Latin Asclepius (II, pp. 458-460).

Why is Corpus Hermeticum XVII so short?

Because most of it is lost. In the manuscripts it runs straight on from XVI; Scott (1925) and Mead (1906) both explained the gap as leaves or quires dropped from the manuscript from which the surviving copies descend. Only the end of the dialogue remains.

Where can I read Corpus Hermeticum XVII for free?

In Mead’s Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. II (1906), pp. 285-286, in Scott’s Hermetica, vol. I (1924), pp. 272-275, with notes in vol. II, pp. 457-461, and in Kingsford and Maitland’s The Virgin of the World (1885), p. 107, all scanned at the Internet Archive. Everard’s Divine Pymander (1650) does not contain it.

Cite this