daimon

daimon (pl. daimonğs), in Greek, ‘divine spirit’, commonly interpreted etymologically as ‘he who allots’. The word is used loosely in Greek poetry to mean ‘god’ or ‘the gods’; but in general daimones did not have this equivalence; there were no images of them and they received no cult, except that the first libation at a wine-drinking was made in honour of the Good Daimon. In general daimon describes an aspect of divine power which cannot be identified with a particular god, and is only rarely used to designate one of the Olympian gods. It is this power which gives a man good or bad fortune at any time, so that he may feel that he has the daimon on his side, or else that he is struggling against it; thus daimon approximates in meaning to irresistible fate. (Heracleitus declared in a famous utterance that an individual's character is his daimon, thereby asserting that a person's destiny is under his own control.) Hesiod says that after death the men of the Golden Age were transformed by Zeus into daimones, able to confer prosperity on mankind. Perhaps this was the basis for honouring great and powerful men when they had died, as for example in the case of the Persian king Darius, who was conjured up as a daimon in the Persae of Aeschylus; Plato thought those who died fighting for their country should be honoured as daimones. The notion of daimones as intermediate beings between gods and men may long have existed in popular superstition, but is introduced into literature by Plato. His followers extended the idea to include daimones as evil spirits, ‘demons’. For Socrates' ‘divine sign’ (daimonion) see SOCRATES. See also EMPEDOCLES.