How vast the place must be — “O Thrice-greatest!”
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Asclepius — Μάλιστα.
Hermes — Πηλίκον οὖν δεῖ τὸν τόπον εἶναι ἐν ᾧ κινεῖται, καὶ ποταπὸν τὴν φύσιν; οὐ πολὺ μείζονα, ἵνα δυνηθῇ δέξασθαι τῆς φορᾶς τὴν συνέχειαν καὶ μὴ θλιβόμενον τὸ κινούμενον ὑπὸ τῆς στενότητος ἐπίσχῃ τὴν κίνησιν;
Asclepius — Παμμέγεθές τι χρῆμα, ὦ Τρισμέγιστε.
— Certainly. — How large, then, must the place be in which it moves, and of what nature? Far greater, so that it may be able to receive the continuity of the motion, and that the moved, not cramped by narrowness, may not have its motion checked. — A vast thing, O Thrice-greatest!
If the cosmos moves, how large and of what nature must the place be in which it moves? Far greater, Hermes reasons, so it can receive the continuity of the motion and not, cramped by narrowness, have its movement checked. Asclepius: 'A vast thing, O Thrice-greatest!' — the first time Hermes's famous title is spoken in the reader.
Hermes presses the question of place (τόπος) to its breaking point. Whatever the cosmos moves in must be far greater than the cosmos — vast enough to receive the unbroken 'continuity of the motion (συνέχεια τῆς φορᾶς)' without pinching it, so that narrowness (στενότης) never checks the movement. The image is almost physical: motion needs room, and the room the whole world needs is beyond measure.
Asclepius can only exclaim: 'A vast thing, O Thrice-greatest!' — and here, for the first time in the reader, the title Τρισμέγιστος is spoken aloud, the name the whole tradition is built on. The interlinear can gloss it plainly (μέγιστος, 'greatest,' intensified threefold) so the reader meets the honorific not as a proper name but as what it means. The unspoken answer already looms: a place greater than the greatest body cannot itself be a body — it must be the incorporeal, which the next sections name as God.
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Corpus Hermeticum CH2.3 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/hermetica/CH2.3/