Plato learned from Hermes
Marsilio Ficino, prefacing his Latin Hermetica, sets out a chain of ancient theologians from Hermes Trismegistus through Orpheus and Pythagoras to Plato, so that Plato's wisdom descends from Hermes.
Told by Marsilio Ficino, 1471, some eighteen centuries after Plato
What the evidence supports
The Hermetic treatises are later than Plato and draw on Platonism, not the other way about. The show's hosts make this correction on air, in episode 21.
Sources (2)
- A. Grafton, "Protestant versus Prophet: Isaac Casaubon on Hermes Trismegistus", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 46 (1983) 78–93
- B. P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation (Cambridge, 1992)