Abstract
A New Volume of Perfect Words
Highlights
The main impetus for this book is the absence of an up-to-date English translation of significant materials, mostly pertaining to ‘philosophical Hermetica’—philosophically-inclined literature of Roman and late antiquity that features the Hellenistic Egyptian culture-hero Hermes Trismegistus (“thricegreatest”)—that are not found in Brian Copenhaver’s celebrated 1992 Cambridge translation of the Corpus Hermeticum and Latin Asclepius.[1]
Via free access review essays rials here presented by Litwa include: the many fragments quoted by the late antique anthologist John Stobaeus; relatively recentlypublished papyri of Hermetic texts found at Vienna and Oxford; fragments of Hermetic works quoted by late ancient and medieval authors; and ancient and medieval testimonies about Hermes and the books associated with him
Litwa’s Hermetica ii gives the first scholarly, English-language translation of the Stobaeus fragments since that of Walter Scott, published in 1924.2 The Vienna fragments first published in 1951, whose text was improved and translated by Jean-Pierre Mahé in 1984,3 as well as the Oxford fragments first published by Joseph Paramelle and Jean-Pierre Mahé in 1991,4 appear here in English for the first time
Summary
M. David Litwa, Hermetica ii: The Excerpts of Stobaeus, Papyrus Fragments, and Ancient Testimonies in an English Translation with Notes and Introductions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Via free access review essays rials here presented by Litwa include: the many fragments quoted by the late antique anthologist John Stobaeus (early fifth century ce?); relatively recentlypublished papyri of Hermetic texts found at Vienna and Oxford; fragments of Hermetic works quoted by late ancient and medieval authors; and ancient and medieval testimonies about Hermes and the books associated with him (see further Litwa’s own remarks in the volume under review, 1–2).
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