The Texts

The Stobaean Fragments

Around the early 5th century CE, a Macedonian named Johannes Stobaeus assembled a vast anthology of Greek literature for his son’s education. Buried in it are twenty-nine Hermetic excerpts (numbered SH 1-29, with SH 2 in two parts) that appear nowhere in the Corpus Hermeticum; for most of them, Stobaeus is the sole surviving source. One father’s reading list is the reason a large share of the philosophical Hermetica exists at all.

What’s inside

Dialogues of Hermes with Tat and with Ammon, and, unexpectedly, a group in which the teacher is Isis, instructing her son Horus. The centrepiece is the Korē Kosmou (SH 23, with the related SH 24-27): a mythological cosmogony of souls created, rebelling, and punished by embodiment; of civilizing knowledge descending; of Egypt as the sacred centre. It is the most explicitly Egyptian text in the philosophical Hermetica, usually dated to the 2nd-3rd century CE, the same milieu as the Asclepius, on the far side of the tradition from the visionary ascent of nous in Poimandres.

The 29 excerpts at a glance

Today’s numbering goes back to Walter Scott (1924); the older free translations of Chambers (1882) and Mead (1906) number the excerpts in their own ways. The critical edition of Nock and Festugière (vols. III-IV, 1954), which Litwa’s translation follows, kept Scott’s numbers I-XXIX (cited today as SH 1-29) with one change: Scott’s IV A is SH 3, and his IV B and III, which stand side by side in Stobaeus, together make SH 4. For each SH number the table gives its place in Stobaeus’ Anthology (book, chapter and section in the edition of Wachsmuth and Hense, then volume and page), Litwa’s pages and the numbers used by Scott and by Mead. Book, chapter and section and Scott’s numbers come from Scott’s own list (1924, I, pp. 378-379), volume and page from the heading Scott prints over each excerpt (pp. 380-533), Mead’s numbers from the Stobaeus references in his headings (1906, vol. III), and who teaches whom from Stobaeus’ headings or, where a heading names no pupil, from the grouping of Agata Sowińska (2022).

Stobaeus also copied passages of treatises that survive in the Corpus, from CH IV, CH X and CH II, and one passage of the lost Greek original of the Asclepius (chapter 27 of the Latin). For those lines his 5th-century anthology is a second witness, beside the Byzantine manuscripts of the Corpus and, for the Asclepius, beside the Latin version (Scott 1924, I, pp. 378-379).

Virgin or pupil?

Even the famous title is a live question. Greek korē means both “girl, maiden” and “pupil of the eye”, so Korē Kosmou can be read as “Virgin of the World” or “Pupil of the Eye of the World”. The doubt is old: in Francesco Patrizi’s Latin version (first printed in 1591) the page headings read Minerva Mundi, but one of them still reads Pupilla Mundi (Mead 1906, III, p. 93). Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland, with Louis Ménard’s French translation at hand, titled their English version of 1885 The Virgin of the World. Richard Reitzenstein (Poimandres, 1904, pp. 145-146) argued for “pupil”, and Mead, though he printed the text as “The Virgin of the World”, was inclined to follow him (III, pp. 159-168); D. M. Burns (2021) writes “the Pupil of the World”. Under either title, everything we have is excerpts, cut to a 5th-century compiler’s taste. Related open questions: whether SH 23-27 come from one large lost work or several, and how the Isis-Horus line relates to the Hermes-Tat transmission.

How to read it

Before 2018, English readers had four main versions, all made before the critical text: J. D. Chambers (1882), who translated the excerpts of Hermes but left out the Kore Kosmou as “alien from the genuine writings of our Hermes”; Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland (1885), whose preface says that Ménard’s French (2nd ed., 1867) “has been used, but not entirely followed”; Mead (1906), whose rendering is framed by Theosophy; and Walter Scott (1924), notorious for rewriting the Greek he judged corrupt. Three of the excerpts had reached English much earlier, as books of John Everard’s Divine Pymander (1650), which follows Patrizi’s order: SH 2B with SH 11 is its Book 1, SH 4 its Book 14 and SH 2A its Book 15 (see the concordance of Corpus Hermeticum numberings).

The critical text is the edition of Nock and Festugière (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1954), vols. III-IV, its text established and translated into French by Festugière. M. David Litwa, Hermetica II (Cambridge, 2018) follows it and is the first scholarly English translation since Scott’s; it covers all the Stobaean excerpts plus papyrus fragments and ancient testimonies, completing Copenhaver’s 1992 volume. Litwa is in copyright: buy it or borrow it.

To read the Kore Kosmou today in a free scan (the scans are linked in the sources below): Mead, vol. III, pp. 93-134 (his Excerpts XXV-XXVI, that is SH 23-24); Scott, vol. I, pp. 456-495, Greek facing English; or Kingsford and Maitland, where it opens the book at p. 1. Where the tradition’s geography ran (Alexandria and beyond) is mapped in step 03 and the Atlas.

Key facts

Preserved by	Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, early 5th century CE
Contents	29 Hermetic excerpts (SH 1-29, SH 2 in two parts), most surviving nowhere else
Most famous	Korē Kosmou (SH 23): Isis instructing Horus
Composed	Excerpted texts usually dated 2nd-3rd century CE
Title dispute	Korē = 'girl' or 'pupil of the eye'; Reitzenstein (1904, pp. 145-146) argued for 'pupil'
Critical text	Nock and Festugière, Corpus Hermeticum III-IV (Paris, 1954)
Also quotes	Passages of CH II, IV and X and of the Greek Asclepius (Scott 1924, I, pp. 378-379)
Standard English	M. David Litwa, Hermetica II (Cambridge, 2018), from the critical text

Fair questions

How many Stobaean fragments are there?

Twenty-nine. Nock and Festugière's critical edition (1954) numbers them I-XXIX, and Litwa's translation (2018) cites them as SH 1-29; SH 2 comes in two parts, 2A and 2B. Older translations count differently: Mead (1906) has 27 excerpts and leaves out SH 13, a single sentence on necessity. The table on this page puts the SH, Scott and Mead numbers side by side.

Who was Stobaeus?

Johannes Stobaeus, probably from Stobi in Macedonia, compiled an anthology of excerpts from more than 500 Greek authors for his son Septimius in the early 5th century (Sowińska 2022, p. 233). Photius, who still read the whole work in the 9th century, describes it as a work in four books (Bibliotheca, codex 167); later copies split it into two works.

What does Kore Kosmou actually mean?

Both 'Virgin of the World' and 'Pupil (of the eye) of the World' are defensible: Greek korē carries both senses. Kingsford and Maitland titled their 1885 English version 'The Virgin of the World', with Louis Ménard's French at hand; Reitzenstein (1904) argued for 'pupil', and Mead (1906) leaned the same way.

Why aren't these fragments in the Corpus Hermeticum?

The Corpus is a separate Byzantine compilation; Stobaeus excerpted mostly from Hermetic writings that never entered it. His anthology is the sole source for most of these texts, so the tradition survives through two largely separate channels, which overlap only where Stobaeus also quotes CH II, IV and X.

Where can I read them in English?

For study, Litwa's Hermetica II (2018), in copyright: the first scholarly English version since Scott's, made from the critical text. Free scans of older versions: Chambers (1882, without the Kore Kosmou), Kingsford and Maitland (1885), Mead (1906, vol. III) and Scott (1924, vol. I, with the Greek). All predate the critical text; the table on this page matches Scott's and Mead's numbers to SH.

Sources & further reading

• M. David Litwa, Hermetica II: The Excerpts of Stobaeus, Papyrus Fragments, and Ancient Testimonies (Cambridge UP, 2018), SH 1-29 at pp. 19-160 (Cambridge Core).
• A. D. Nock and A.-J. Festugière (eds.), Corpus Hermeticum, vol. III: Fragments extraits de Stobée I-XXII, vol. IV: Fragments extraits de Stobée XXIII-XXIX (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1954), text established and translated by Festugière (BnF catalogue).
• Curt Wachsmuth and Otto Hense (eds.), Ioannis Stobaei Anthologium (Berlin: Weidmann): vols. I-II, ed. Wachsmuth (1884), open at vol. I, p. 385, the start of the Kore Kosmou and vol. III, ed. Hense (1894), open at p. 436, SH 2A, scans at the Internet Archive; the table gives volume and page for every excerpt.
• Walter Scott, Hermetica, vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), list of the excerpts at pp. 378-379 (book, chapter and section in Stobaeus), Greek and English at pp. 380-533, each excerpt headed by its volume and page in Wachsmuth-Hense, the Kore Kosmou from p. 456 (scan at the Internet Archive, from p. 378).
• G. R. S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. III: Excerpts and Fragments (London and Benares: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906), the Virgin of the World from p. 93, its title discussed at pp. 159-168 (scan at the Internet Archive, from p. 93): public domain, pre-critical; see our Method note.
• Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland (tr.), The Virgin of the World of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus (London: George Redway, 1885), with “Fragments of the Book of Hermes to his Son Tatios” and “Fragments of the Writings of Hermes to Ammon”; the preface states that Louis Ménard’s French translation (2nd ed., Paris, 1867) was used but not entirely followed (scan at the Internet Archive, the Virgin of the World from p. 1).
• John David Chambers (tr.), The Theological and Philosophical Works of Hermes Trismegistus, Christian Neoplatonist (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1882), Part II, “Excerpts from Hermes by Stobaeus”, from p. 100 (scan at the Internet Archive, from p. 100).
• Richard Reitzenstein, Poimandres: Studien zur griechisch-ägyptischen und frühchristlichen Literatur (Leipzig: Teubner, 1904), pp. 145-146, on the title: Isis, goddess of the black earth, is the eye of Osiris and so herself the Korē Kosmou; discussed by Mead (1906, III, p. 159).
• Francesco Patrizi, Nova de universis philosophia (Venice, 1593; first printed at Ferrara, 1591), with his Latin version of the Hermetica: both editions described by Scott (1924, I, pp. 36-37); its Kore Kosmou headed Minerva Mundi, once Pupilla Mundi, according to Mead (1906, III, p. 93).
• Agata Sowińska, “[Hermes Trismegistos] Stobaei Hermetica XI”, Vox Patrum 81 (2022), pp. 233-280, with a Polish translation of SH 11; Stobaeus, his son Septimius and the more than 500 authors of the anthology at p. 233, grouping of the excerpts by speaker at p. 234 (doi:10.31743/vp.13018).
• D. M. Burns, “A New Volume of Perfect Words”, review of Litwa’s translation (2018), Aries 21 (2021), pp. 271-278 (open access).
• Otto Hense, “Ioannes 18” (Stobaeus), in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie IX.2 (1916), cols. 2549-2586, on codex 167 of Photius’ Bibliotheca (Wikisource).