XXVI. 1. Moreover, we hear Homer also on every

occasion calling the good variously ''godlike" and '' equal to gods," and as " having directions ' from gods " ; whereas he employs epithets connected with the daimones to both worthy and unworthy in common :
Draw nigh thou daimoniAn I Why so f earest the Argives 9 '
And again:
But when indeed for the fourth time he charged, a daimon's equal.*
And:
0 thou daimonian I what bo great ills do Priam now And Priam's sons to thee, that thou dost hotly rage Troy's well-built town to rase ?*
— as though the daimones possessed a mixed and an unbalanced nature and propensity.
2. For which reason Plato ^ refers unto the God upon Olympus' height things " right " and " odd,"^ and to the daimones those that respond to these.^
3. Moreover, Xenocrates^ 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
> &. to the mysteries of the Egyptians.
* iiiZ^a — also meaning viril/ia,
» //., xiii. 810. * il., V. 438.
»//.,iv.31f. • Legg.,niA,
7 Pythagorean technical terms.
> rk hrri^mwm — ^the meaning seeming to he rather that of " concord " than of '* discord."
* An immediate pupil of Plato's,
300 THRICE-GRBATEST HKRMKS
the circumambient,^ mighty and powerful indeed, but difficult to turn and sullen, who take pleasure in Buch things, and when they get them turn to nothing woraa
4. The beneficent and good onee, again, Hedod also calls ''holy daimones" and "guardians of men* — ''wealth-givers and possessors of this soTereign pre- rogative." *
5. Plato * again gives to this race the name of hermeneutic and of diaconic^ 'twixt Gtods and men, speeding up thitherwards men's vows and prayer^ and bringing thence prophetic answers hitherwards and gifts of [all] good things.
6. Whereas Empedocles ^ says that the daimones have to amend whatever faults they make, or diacx>rds thej may strike :
"For aether's rush doth chase them seawards; sea spews them on land's flat ; and earth into the beams of tireless sun ; and he casts [them again] into the swirls of aether. One takes them from another, and all abhor [them] "^ — until after being thus chastened and purified they regain their natural place and rank.