 The Stoics, as Bruno knew, had similarly proposed that the cosmos comprised two mutually dependent principles, the World Soul or pneuma and matter, active and passive respectively, with the former accommodating Mind. Indeed, when introducing his account of the Universal Soul and Universal Matter in On the Cause, the Principle and the One (1584), he included the Stoics among the several schools and authors who had identified the World Soul and matter as the active and passive principles of the physical world. Stoic philosophy also contributed to Bruno’s doctrine in surreptitious ways. In the Pimander (chaps 10–12) Hermes Trismegistus had declared that the cosmos was composed of matter and soul and that the latter included Mind. Again, Virgil (Aeneid, VI.724–727) had described the super- and sublunary regions as animated from within by spiritus, which Bruno identified in this context with the Universal Soul, and added that they were moved by a Mind diffused throughout their vast mass. Hermes Trismegistus and Virgil were, according to conventional wisdom, reporting the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians and the Pythagoreans respectively. As such, Bruno considered them authorities for his interpretation. Neither, however, was authentic. The comments in the Pimander are just one of many Stoic borrowings that reflect the eclectic intellectual ambient of Alexandrian Egypt in which Hermetic works of this kind were composed. And unbeknown to Bruno, Virgil’s lines drew on Stoic rather than Pythagorean thought (Knox 2013).