Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

4 A bold thing to write in an age of Emperor- divinising.
6 Apparently from an otherwise unknown poet. See Bergk,
iii. 637.

taken, torn from the temples and altars, they have naught but their tombs and graves.

3. Wherefore Antigonus the Elder, when a certain Hermodotus, in his poems, proclaimed him " Son of the Sun and God," remarked : " My night-stool boy has not so exalted an opinion of me."

And with reason also did Lysippus, the sculptor, blame Apelles, the painter, for putting a thunderbolt in Alexander's hand when painting his portrait ; whereas he himself gave him a spear-head, — from which not even time itself shall take away the glory, for it is true and really his.

THE THEORY OF THE DAIMONES

XXV.1 1. They, therefore, [do] better who believe that the things related about Typhon and Osiris and Isis are passions neither of gods nor of men, but of mighty daimones, who — as Plato and Pythagoras and Xenocrates and Chrysippus say, following the theologers of bygone days — have been born more manful than men, far surpassing us in the strength of their nature, yet not having the divine unmixed and pure, but proportioned with the nature of soul and sense of body, susceptible of pleasure and pain and all the passions, which as innate to such metamorphoses trouble some [of them] more and others less.

2. For the Gigantic and Titanic [Passions] sung of among the Greeks, and certain lawless deeds of Kronos and antagonisms of Python against Apollo, and fleeings of Dionysus, and wanderings of Demeter, in no way fall behind the Osiric and Typhonic [Passions], and others which all may hear unrestrainedly spoken of in myth.

And all these things which, under the veil of mystic

1 This chapter is quoted by Eusebius, Prcep. Ev., V. v. 1.

sacred rites and perfectionings, are carefully kept from being spoken of to, or being allowed to be seen by, the multitude, have a similar reason (logos).1

XXVI. 1. Moreover, we hear Homer also on every occasion calling the good variously "godlike" and " equal to gods," and as " having directions 2 from gods " ; whereas he employs epithets connected with the daimones to both worthy and unworthy in common :

Draw nigh them daimonian ! Why so fearest the Argives ? 3

And again :

But when indeed for the fourth time he charged, a daimon's equal.4

And:

0 thou daimonian ! what so great ills do Priam now And Priam's sons to thee, that thou dost hotly rage Troy's well-built town to rase?6

— as though the daimones possessed a mixed and an unbalanced nature and propensity.

2. For which reason Plato 6 refers unto the God upon Olympus' height things " right " and " odd," 7 and to the daimones those that respond to these.8

3. Moreover, Xenocrates9 thinks that the nefast days, and all the holy days on which are strikings or beatings or fastings or blasphemies or foul language, have nothing to do with honours paid to gods or to beneficent daimones; but that there are natures in

1 Sc. to the mysteries of the Egyptians.

2 ufa* — also meaning mrilia.

3 II, xiii. 810. 4 II, v. 438.

6 II, iv. 31 f. • Legg., 717 A.

7 Pythagorean technical terms.

8 ret avriQwva. — the meaning seeming to be rather that of
" concord " than of " discord."

a An immediate pupil of Plato's.

the circumambient,1 mighty and powerful indeed, but difficult to turn and sullen, who take pleasure in such things, and when they get them turn to nothing worse.

4. The beneficent and good ones, again, Hesiod also calls " holy daimones " and " guardians of men " — "wealth-givers and possessors of this sovereign prerogative." 2

5. Plato s again gives to this race the name of hermeneutic and of diaconic4 'twixt Gods and men, speeding up thitherwards men's vows and prayers, and bringing thence propaetic answers hither wards and gifts of [all] good things.

6. Whereas Empedocles 6 says that the daimones have to amend whatever faults they make, or discords they may atrike :