The Corpus Hermeticum (Hermetica): which edition to buy
The Corpus Hermeticum is a collection of Greek treatises from Roman Egypt, opening with the Poimandres. In English it exists in several translations from different centuries, and the choice of translation matters far more than the choice of publisher.
14 editions in stock from 11 publishers · Hardcover, Paperback · $8.93 to $148.00
How to choose
For accuracy, Brian Copenhaver's Hermetica (Cambridge University Press, 1992) is the standard scholarly translation, with the Latin Asclepius and extensive notes.
For a readable modern version, The Way of Hermes, translated by Clement Salaman and colleagues (Inner Traditions), is plain and close to the Greek.
Many low-cost editions reprint older public-domain translations: John Everard's 1650 Divine Pymander, in seventeenth-century English, or G. R. S. Mead's Thrice-Greatest Hermes (1906). They are historically interesting, but less accurate than modern work.
M. David Litwa's Hermetica II (Cambridge, 2018) collects the Hermetic fragments and testimonies that are not in the Corpus, and makes a natural second volume to Copenhaver.
