As we read Homer, we notice that in many
different places he distinctively calls the good ‘godlike’
1 and ‘peers of the gods’
2 and “having prudence
[p. 63]
gained from the gods,’
3 but that the epithet derived
from the demigods (or daemons) he uses of the worthy
and worthless alike
4; for example :
Daemon-possessed, come on ! Why seek you to frighten the
Argives
Thus ?5
and again
When for the fourth time onward he came with a rush, like
a daemon6;
and
Daemon-possessed, in what do Priam and children of Priam
Work you such ill that your soul is ever relentlessly eager
Ilium, fair-built city, to bring to complete desolation ?7
The assumption, then, is that the demigods (or
daemons) have a complex and inconsistent nature
and purpose ; wherefore Plato
8 assigns to the
Olympian gods right-hand qualities and odd numbers,
and to the demigods the opposite of these. Xenocrates also is of the opinion that such days as are days
of ill omen, and such festivals as have associated with
them either beatings or lamentations or fastings or
scurrilous language or ribald jests have no relation to
the honours paid to the gods or to worthy demigods,
but he believes that there exist in the space about us
certain great and powerful natures, obdurate, however, and morose, which take pleasure in such things
as these, and, if they succeed in obtaining them,
resort to nothing worse.
Then again, Hesiod calls the worthy and good
[p. 65]
demigods ‘holy deities’ and ‘guardians of mortals’
9
and
Givers of wealth, and having therein a reward that is kingly.10
Plato
11 calls this class of beings an interpretative
and ministering class, midway between gods and
men, in that they convey thither the prayers and
petitions of men, and thence they bring hither the
oracles and the gifts of good things.
Empedocles
12 says also that the demigods must pay
the penalty for the sins that they commit and the
duties that they neglect :
Might of the Heavens chases them forth to the realm of
the Ocean ;
Ocean spews them out on the soil of the Earth, and
Earth drives them
Straight to the rays of the tireless Sun, who consigns
them to Heaven's
Whirlings ; thus one from another receives them, but
ever with loathing ;
until, when they have thus been chastened and
purified, they recover the place and position to which
they belong in accord with Nature.
