Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/86

 'the pagan ones' was probably as frequent an expression as its synonym 'the extraneous ones.' To these may perhaps be added the rare appellation recorded by Schmidt, [Greek: tsinia]: for if the derivation from [Greek: tzina], 'fraud,' 'deceit,' be right, it will mean 'the false gods.'

Besides these three names, which indicate the pre-Christian origin of these deities, there are several others—some in universal usage, others local and dialectic,—which represent them in various aspects. As a class of 'divinities' they are called [Greek: daimonia]: as 'apparitions,' whose precise nature often cannot be further determined, [Greek: phasmata] or [Greek: phantasmata] and, in Crete, [Greek: sphantachta] : as swift and 'sudden' in their coming and going, [Greek: xaphnika] : as ghostly and passing like a vision, [Greek: eidôlika]: as denizens, for the most part, of the air, [Greek: aerika]: and from their similarity to angels, [Greek: angelika].

It may seem strange that the first and the last of these terms, [Greek: daimonia] and [Greek: angelika], should be practically interchangeable; for the Church at any rate did her best in early days to make the former understood in the sense of 'demons' or 'devils' rather than 'deities.' But the attempted change of meaning seems to have failed to make much impression on a people who did not view goodness as an essential of godhead; and in later times the Church herself, or many of her less educated clergy at any rate, surrendered to the popular ideas. Father Richard, a Jesuit resident during the seventeenth century in the island of Santorini, mentions the case of an old Greek priest who had long made a speciality of exorcism and was prepared to expel angels and demons alike from the bodies of those who were afflicted by them. The priest when questioned by the Jesuit as to what distinction he drew between demons and angels, replied that the demons came from hell, while the angels were [Greek: aerikon ti], a species of aërial being; but while he maintained a theoretical difference between them, his practice betrayed a belief that both were equally harmful. Exorcism had to be employed in cases of= fraus, p. 1571.], p. 122.]