{
  "author": "ChronologiaOS editorial guides",
  "date": "2026-10-09",
  "department": "Knowledge Transmission",
  "department_id": "TRANSMISSION",
  "epistemic_label": "Source guide",
  "epistemic_status": "SOURCE_GUIDE",
  "period": "Late antiquity",
  "place": "Graeco-Roman Egypt",
  "public_sources": [
    {
      "publisher": "Cambridge University Press",
      "title": "Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius",
      "type": "Critical edition and translation",
      "url": "https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/hermetica/A2779DE70B173114CC8669BEB3CF507D"
    }
  ],
  "publication_state": "PUBLIC",
  "read_time": "3 min read",
  "sections": [
    {
      "body": "Copenhaver's Hermetica, published by Cambridge, translates the Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius with notes and an introduction. The research record characterizes the corpus as late antique and requires a separate composition and witness record for each treatise.",
      "heading": "Start with the edition",
      "source": 0
    },
    {
      "body": "A corpus assembled from treatises of different dates has no single composition date. The record's rule is explicit: do not assign one date to all treatises, and do not project the corpus's authorship back into pharaonic prehistory, whatever the texts themselves claim about Hermes Trismegistus.",
      "heading": "Not one book, not one date"
    },
    {
      "body": "The Asclepius survives in Latin, and the record models that witness history separately from the Greek treatises. A translation's manuscript tradition is its own chain of evidence.",
      "heading": "The Latin witness"
    },
    {
      "body": "Texts that present themselves as ancient wisdom invite a date much older than their language and references support. What internal evidence would you check first to date a treatise: vocabulary, quoted authors, or doctrines?",
      "heading": "A question to carry forward"
    }
  ],
  "short_title": "How old is a text that says it is ancient?",
  "slug": "corpus-hermeticum-dating-a-late-antique-collection",
  "summary": "The Hermetic treatises present themselves as the wisdom of an Egyptian sage. Learn why the record dates each treatise separately and never projects the corpus into pharaonic prehistory.",
  "tags": [
    "Hermetica",
    "Corpus Hermeticum",
    "Asclepius",
    "Late antiquity",
    "Textual tradition"
  ],
  "title": "The Corpus Hermeticum: dating a collection that claims to be older."
}