A rectangular decorative woodcut headpiece featuring intricate scrollwork, foliage, birds, and several human-like figures (putti) flanking a central mask or face.

A CRITIQUE

OF THE MORE FAMOUS

AUTHORS.

A small decorative floral vignette ornament.

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS.

A square woodcut decorative initial letter 'M' depicting a landscape scene with figures and architecture.He is remembered as having been a contemporary of Moses. Diodorus Siculus, Book 1. He records that Mercury The Roman name for Hermes, often used interchangeably in the Renaissance. was held in the highest honor by Osiris, acting as his closest advisor and sacred scribe. According to Eusebius, he was called Thoyth Thoth by the Egyptians. Iamblichus, in On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, mentions that the alphabet was discovered by him, and that thousands of books were written by his hand.

Mercury was an Egyptian, called Hermes in Greek, and was therefore named Trismegistus original: τρισμέγιστος (trismegistos), which means "thrice greatest," because he stood out as the greatest Philosopher, the greatest Priest, and the greatest King. For, as Plato writes, it was the custom of the Egyptians to choose their Priests from the Philosophers, and their Kings from the Priests. Lilius Gregorius Gyraldus in Dialogue 11 on the History of Poets.

Suidas says that he flourished before Pharaoh and was called Thrice Greatest because he had delivered an oracle concerning the Trinity; but Augustine, in The City of God, Book 18, Chapter 39, proves that this Mercury lived even after Moses himself—whom God called the "God of Pharaoh" A reference to Exodus 7:1, where God tells Moses, "I have made thee a god to Pharaoh."—so that one should believe Hermes drew what he said from Moses, if indeed he said anything relevant to the matter.

Eusebius, in Preparation for the Gospel, Book 1, Chapter 7, cites his book On the Origin of the World. It is also established from the Ancients that he engraved his doctrine upon columns so that it would not perish in the flooding of the Nile; Proclus, in his commentary on Plato, reports that these columns still existed in his own time.