Added to the Greek reader on 3 October 2026 (docs/research/new-texts-scope.md, Part A, A.4), by a script of its own (scripts/plato/build_poimandres.py) that feeds the same reader, lexicon and triangulation as the Plato and Plotinus texts. Method: docs/EDITORIAL-METHOD.md.
| Work / author / dates | Corpus Hermeticum I, Ποιμάνδρης; anonymous, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus; Greek, Egypt, probably 2nd–3rd century CE [REPORTED] |
| Part added | the whole treatise, §§1–32 |
| Reader route | /read/poimandres · about /read/poimandres/about · sections #s-1 … #s-32 |
| Catalogue kind | hermetica ("Hermes Trismegistus (Greek)"), a kind of its own, not plato: see §4 |
| Status | working edition · reviewed by: — |
1. Witnesses
| Siglum | Witness | Kind | Licence | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scott | W. Scott, Hermetica I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), pp. 114–132 (Greek), 115–133 (English) | edition + translation | public domain (published 1924; Scott d. 1925) | archive.org ScottHermeticaVolOne |
| F | First1KGreek tlg1286.tlg001.1st1K-grc1 (Scott's Greek; TEI header: CC BY-SA 4.0, dated 2020-08-19; source given as the archive.org scan above) [VERIFIED] | digital | CC BY-SA 4.0 | github.com/OpenGreekAndLatin/First1KGreek |
| G | GLAUx corpus, document 1286-001 (2,703 tokens; automatic lemma, POS, syntax) [VERIFIED] | digital, analysed | CC BY-SA 4.0 | github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux |
| Mead | G. R. S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes II (London and Benares 1906), pp. 3–20 | translation | public domain (Mead d. 1933) | archive.org thricegreatesthe02hermuoft |
Consulted, not used: Nock–Festugière (Budé 1945; Festugière d. 1982) and the modern translations (Copenhaver 1992, Salaman et al. 1999) are in copyright: cite by locator only. Reitzenstein's Poimandres (1904) and Parthey (1854) are public domain and give the transmitted text with less emendation, but exist only as page images (archive.org poimandresstudie00reituoft, poemander00trisgoog): see §10.
2. Base and why
Scott's Greek via First1KGreek is the only openly licensed digital Greek text of the treatise. It is not the text scholars now read. Scott emends heavily and moves whole blocks; Nock–Festugière is the standard. We use Scott because we may, and show his apparatus so that his proposals are never mistaken for the transmitted text (protocols 12–13).
GLAUx is a different edition. Its first sentence reads μετεωρισθείσης μου where Scott has μετεωρισθείσης μὲν τῆς διανοίας [DOCUMENTED, new-texts-scope A.4], and it has ἠράσθη where Scott prints his ἠγάσθη (§12). GLAUx follows a TLG text, probably Nock–Festugière [UNVERIFIED]. Its running text is never shown. It is used only as a lemma lookup: Scott's words are aligned to GLAUx's in the same section by their bare forms (accents and breathings aside, difflib on the word sequence), and an aligned word takes GLAUx's lemma and AGDT tag; an unaligned word takes the analysis of the same exact form elsewhere in the treatise, or in the other GLAUx texts we hold (Plato), and only then of a form that matches without accents.
3. Collation
Script: python3 scripts/plato/build_poimandres.py (--review lists words with no lemma). No collation with Reitzenstein or Nock–Festugière yet (§10).
4. Decisions
- Order. Scott moves §5b (fire, air, earth and water separating) after §8b, and §§27–29 (the preaching) after §§31–32. The reader keeps the manuscripts' order and numbering, which every other edition and both translations here follow; the moved blocks stand at their own numbers, still wrapped in Scott's ⟨⟨ ⟩⟩. Scott's placeholders at the old places (
5b,27,29in First1K) are dropped. His subdivisions (5a/5b, 8a/8b, 11a/11b, 13a/13b, 26a/26b) are merged, so the passages are §§1–32. - Scott's signs are kept in the words. ⟨x⟩ his additions (analysed, read with the addition); [x] his deletions (the manuscripts' words: grey, not analysed, as Volkmann's deletions in Ennead I.6); [[x]] words he moves away (grey); ⟨⟨x⟩⟩ words he moves here (analysed); ⎡x⎤ cruces (analysed); ⟨…⟩ lacunae (grey). A word's lemma is looked up on its reading form (additions in, deletions out).
- Small capitals. Scott prints a letter he changes by conjecture as a small capital (ἠΓάσθην for the manuscripts' ἠράσθην). First1K keeps them as capitals or Latin letters; the reader prints them lower case and lists the 28 words on the About page ("Letters Scott changes"). First found as apparent OCR slips; the page images (e.g. p. 116, ἀπέραντοΝ with τὸ ἀπέραντον scripsi: τῆς ἀπεράντου codd.) show they are Scott's own typography.
- OCR slips in First1K (λέγεν for λέγειν, διδάξαω, ἰσχυρόγερος, φύσεαως, κρατεῖταικαὶ …) corrected and listed on the About page, each read against the page images.
- Kind.
hermetica, notplato. The Hermetica are a Graeco-Egyptian revelation literature transmitted apart from the Platonic school (Ficino translated the Corpus before Plato, 1463 [REPORTED]); their Arabic afterlife (Hermes = Idrīs, the Ḥarrānians' prophet) is its own stream; and Green Mantle's Platonic current (content/platonic-current.json) already has "The Hermetica" as a node. Code that means "a Greek text" now asksGREEK_KINDS(lib/catalogue.ts) instead ofkind === "plato".
5. Segmentation and word IDs
One passage per section (steph "1"…"32", unit "§"); word ids <section>.<n> over all tokens, punctuation and grey tokens included. Ids are stable as long as Scott's text and the tokeniser do not change.
6. Analysis layer
- Lemma + AGDT tag from GLAUx by alignment (above). AI (Claude): 51 forms GLAUx's text lacks (Scott's readings: ἠγάσθην, π⟨ροελθὼν⟩, ⟨ἐ⟩κοσμοποιήθη, ⟨ὑ⟩περούσιον …), in
scripts/plato/ai/poimandres-lemmas.json, each marked on the word ("lemma and morphology by AI"). - Lemma corrections (
LEMMA_FIXin the script): GLAUx's garbled or non-LSJ lemmas (μηίγνυνοι → ἀνοίγνυμι, ἀρρενοθηεύς → ἀρρενόθηλυς, καταλείβω → καταλείπω for καταλείψαντες, Ποίμανδρος → Ποιμάνδρης …), listed with the corrections. - Lexicon: LSJ (549 of 552 lemmas; LSJ's own citations of Corp. Herm. 1 kept as "cites", work
1286,001), Boisacq (266), Wiktionary (462), by the standard scripts (lsj_index.py,lsj_etym.py,boisacq_index.py,fetch_wiktionary.py,build_lexicon.py poimandres). - Word glosses: AI. Lemmas glossed for the other Greek texts keep their gloss; 196 new ones written for this text (
scripts/plato/ai/poimandres-glosses.tsv, 3 October 2026). No AI translation of the treatise: two public-domain translations cover it.
7. The Arabic branch
No Arabic version of the Poimandres is known [REPORTED]. Arabic Hermes (Idrīs; the Ḥarrānians) is a later, separate tradition; van Bladel, The Arabic Hermes (2009) is in copyright (locator only). Links to Suhrawardī (who names Hermes among the masters of dhawq), to the Ṭayr recitals and to the mirror path (Anthropos and his reflection in Nature, §14) are resonances, not influence (docs/research/platonic-current-review.md).
8. Translation
| Key | Translation | Text | Alignment |
|---|---|---|---|
mead | Mead 1906 | archive.org OCR; page heads and footnotes removed; OCR slips corrected (MEAD_FIX) | his own §§1–32 (he translates the transmitted text, from Reitzenstein and Parthey) |
scott | Scott 1924 | archive.org OCR; facing Greek, apparatus and footnotes removed; marginal numbers removed; OCR slips corrected (SCOTT_FIX) | by his section numbers, cut by start phrases; his transposed 5b moved back into §5, his §§27–29 at their numbers |
Both are public domain and quoted in full. They translate different Greek: Mead the transmitted text, Scott his emended one, so many of their differences are textual (cause "variant"), not interpretive.
Triangulation (§17): python3 scripts/triangulate.py poimandres (Mead, Scott; no commentaries; our AI English = the glosses only). Output: app/src/content/triangulation/poimandres.json: 95 divergences over 32 sections, 56 marked serious (mostly Scott's emendations and transpositions against Mead's transmitted text, cause "variant"). Word ids re-checked with --revalidate after the last tokeniser change.
AI-English flags (11, all on word glosses, all "doubtful", none a contradiction), for a person to review:
- §16 ἐρῶ glossed under λέγω ('I shall say'): it is ἐράω, 'I love (the word)'. Fixed (3 Oct): the lemma corrected (
ai/poimandres-lemmas.json). - Shared glosses (written for the other Greek texts; changing them changes those texts too, so left for review): ὑπάρχω (§9, 'being life and light'), μείρομαι for the noun εἱμαρμένη 'Fate' (§§9, 15), ἐκφέρω 'divulge' where the sense is 'bring forth' (§§11, 17), ἔοικα for the adverb εἰκότως (§12), νοέω 'intellect' (§20), μάλα without μᾶλλον (§23), ὑπέρ + acc. 'beyond' (§26), δύναμις 'as far as possible' (§26).
9. Rights
Greek: Scott 1924 is public domain; First1KGreek's digitisation is CC BY-SA 4.0, so the page is share-alike. GLAUx CC BY-SA 4.0 (its underlying edition, probably ©, is not displayed). Mead 1906 and Scott 1924 English: public domain in the US and in life+70 countries. AI layers ours, marked.
10. Open questions / to review
- Collate Scott against Reitzenstein 1904 (public domain, page images only) to give, per emendation, the manuscripts' reading in the apparatus; Scott's own apparatus (on the page images, under the Greek) has them, but its OCR is unusable.
- The 51 AI lemmas and the 196 AI glosses: review.
- Resonances (§16,
scripts/resonances.py poimandres) not yet run.
11. Change log
- 2026-10-03: added (Scott's Greek via First1KGreek, GLAUx lemma lookup, Mead and Scott English, AI glosses, triangulation).