Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/308

 sort), in later writers [Greek: daímôn]—both of them vague terms which embrace other kinds of deities as well, yet not so vague but that with the aid of context we can readily discover in them the equivalent of the 'guardian-angel' or other modern genius. From Homer onwards the word [Greek: lanchánein] is regularly used of the allotment of each human life from the moment of birth to one of these guardians, and the belief in their attendance upon men throughout, and even after, life seems to have had general acceptance. In the Iliad the wraith of Patroclus is made to speak of the hateful Ker to whom he was allotted at the hour of birth, and the Ker here mentioned is not, I think, merely fate in the abstract but as truly a person as that baneful Ker of battle and carnage 'who wore about her shoulders a robe red with the blood of heroes .' After Homer the word [Greek: daimôn] is preferred, but there is no change in the idea. The famous saying of Heraclitus, [Greek: êthos anthrôpô daimon], 'the god that guides man's lot is character,' is in no wise dark, but Plato throws even clearer light upon the popular belief in guardian-daemons. 'It is said that at each man's death his daemon, the daemon to whom he had been allotted for his lifetime, has the task of guiding him to some appointed place ,' where the souls of men must assemble for judgement. Here the words 'it is said' indicate the popular source of the doctrine; and this is confirmed by another passage in which Plato protests against the fatalism involved in the allotment of souls to particular daemons, and prefers to hold that the soul may choose its own guardian. Again in a fragment of Menander there is a simple statement of the belief in a form which robs fatalism of its gloom:

Beside each man a daemon takes his stand E'en at his birth-hour, through life's mysteries A guide right good.

But there were others who did not take so cheerful a view, at any rate of their own guardian-deities; 'alas for the most cruel daemon to whom I am allotted ' is a complaint of a type by no