_Plutarch’s Dæmonology—Dæmonology as a means of reconciliation
between the traditional Polytheism and philosophic
Monotheism—Dæmonlore in Greek philosophers and in the popular
faith—Growth of a natural tendency to identify the gods of the
polytheistic tradition with the Dæmons—Emphasis thus given to
the philosophic conception of the Deity—Dæmons responsible for
all the crude and cruel superstitions attaching to the popular
gods—Function of the Dæmons as mediators between God and man._
How, then, does Plutarch reconcile this lofty conception of a Deity who
is Unity, Eternity, and Supreme Intelligence, with the multitude of
individual deities which form so essential a part of the “hereditary
Faith” of Græco-Roman civilization, and which are universally admitted
as displaying qualities discrepant from even a far lower notion of God
than that which Plutarch actually maintained? Further, since the Empire
includes other nationalities than the Greeks, and the Roman Pantheon is
not the exclusive habitation of native-born deities, how shall he find a
place in his theological scheme for the gods of other peoples, so that
there may be that Catholic Unity in faith which shall correspond to the
one political dominion under which the world dwells in so great a peace
and concord?
The difficulty of reconciling Polytheism with philosophic Monotheism
was, of course, not new. In earlier days it had been necessary for
philosophers to secure their monotheistic speculations from the charge of
Atheism by finding in their systems a dignified position for the popular
gods. And even those philosophers who sincerely believed in the existence
of beings corresponding to the popular conceptions felt the need of
accounting, in some more or less specious way, for the ill deeds that
were traditionally attributed to so many of them. The ancient doctrine
of Dæmons, emanating from some obscure source in Antiquity,[233] had
been adopted by the Pythagoreans in the latter sense,[234] while Plato,
who believed in none of these things, had, on one or two occasions, by
the use of philosophic “myth” replete with more than Socratic irony,
described these beings as playing a part between God and man which might
be tolerantly regarded as not greatly dissimilar from that popularly
assigned to the lesser deities of the Hellenic Olympus.[235] In the
“Statesman,” the creation-myth, to which the Stranger invites the
younger Socrates to give his entire attention, “like a child to a story,”
describes how the Deity himself tended men and was their protector,
while Dæmons had a share, after the manner of shepherds, in the
superintendence of animals according to genera and herds.[236] Another
story which Socrates, in the “Banquet,” says that he heard from Diotima,
that wonderful person who postponed the Athenian plague for ten years,
tells how Eros is a great Dæmon; how Dæmons are intermediate between
gods and mortals; how the race of Dæmons interpret and transmit to the
gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and interpret and transmit to
men the answers and commands of the gods.[237] For God, we are told, is
not directly associated with man; but it is through the mediation of the
Dæmons, who are many and various, that all communion and converse take
place between the human and the Divine.
But apart altogether from the philosophic use of Dæmonology, there are
evidences that the belief in Dæmons was held in some sort of loose
combination with the popular polytheistic faith. The Hesiodic poems were
a compendium of early Hellenic theology,[238] and Hesiod, according
to Plutarch himself, was the first to indicate with clearness and
distinctness the existence of four species of rational beings—gods,
_dæmons_, heroes, and men.[239] In the passage of Hesiod referred to
(_Works and Days_, 109 sqq.) two kinds of Dæmons are described. The
dwellers in the Golden Age are transformed, after their sleep-like death
on earth, into Terrestrial Dæmons:—
“When earth’s dark breast had closed this race around,
Great Jove as demons raised them from the ground;
_Earth-hovering spirits_, they their charge began,
The ministers of good, and guards of man.
Mantled with mist of darkling air they glide,
And compass earth and pass on every side;
And mark, with earnest vigilance of eyes,
Where just deeds live, or crookèd wrongs arise.”[240]
They are virtuous, holy beings, endowed with immortality—“Jove’s
immortal guardians over mortal men.”[241] The races of the Silver Age
become Subterranean powers, blessed beings, but inferior in honour to
the former class, and distinctly described as mortal.[242] Hesiod says
nothing about Evil Dæmons, although the disappearance of the Brazen
Race furnished an opportunity for their introduction into his scheme
of supernatural beings. But once the existence of beings inferior to
the gods in the celestial hierarchy obtained a recognition in popular
tradition, however vague the recognition might be, the conception would
tend to gather strength and definiteness from the necessity, first
expressed by the philosophers, but doubtless widely spread among the
people, of safeguarding the sanctity of the gods, while at the same
time recognizing the substantial validity of tradition. This tendency
would be also probably aided by the fact that in Homer, as Plutarch
points out, and in the dramatists and prose writers generally, as is
well known, the designations of “gods” and “dæmons” were mutually
interchanged.[243] Plutarch, at all events, who boldly uses the Dæmons
to perform such functions, and to bear the blame for such actions, as
were inappropriate to the divine character, is enabled to make one of
his _dramatis personæ_—Cleombrotus, the traveller, who was specially
devoted to the study of such matters—assert that “it can be demonstrated
by unexceptionable testimony from antiquity that there do exist beings
of a nature intermediate between that of God and man, beings subject
to mortal passions and liable to inevitable changes, but whom we must,
_in accordance with the established custom of our fathers_, regard and
invoke as Dæmons, giving them all due reverence.”[244] It is natural,
therefore, in the light of these indications, to believe that, side by
side with the popular gods, there existed, in the popular imagination,
subordinate beings of two kinds, both described as Dæmons: the first
class comprising the good and benevolent Dæmons of Hesiod, the second
including Dæmons of an evil character and disposition, the belief in
which had developed naturally out of the Hesiodic conception, from the
necessity of fixing the responsibility of evil deeds on supernatural
beings different in nature from the purity and goodness of Deity.[245]
Such a classification of supernatural beings—gods, Dæmons, and evil
Dæmons—could not, of course, be rigidly maintained; the more the good
Dæmons were discriminated from their evil brethren, the more they would
tend to become identified with the gods of the popular tradition, and the
line of demarcation between the divine and the dæmonic nature would be
broken down,[246] Dæmons and gods would be identified, and the splendour
and purity of the Supreme God of all would shine out more fully when
contrasted with those other gods, who, after all, were only Dæmons.
Such, at least, is the process which appears to be taking place in the
numerous contributions which Plutarch makes to the subject of Dæmonology.
He is evidently a sincere believer in the existence of Dæmons, not a
believer in the Platonic sense, and not a believer merely because he
wishes to come to terms with popular ideas. But the final result, so it
appears to us, is that the popular gods become identified with Dæmons,
and are prepared, even in Pagan times, to take that position which was
assigned to them with such whole-hearted sincerity by the early Christian
Fathers;[247] to become the fiends and devils and sprites of another
dispensation; to aid Saladin in excluding the Crusaders from the Holy
Land; to “drink beer instead of nectar” as day labourers in German
forests; or to shine with a sinister splendour on the lives of monks and
peasants in the rural districts of France.[248]
Plutarch gives emphatic indications of his own attitude on the subject
by drawing attention to such expressions of the earlier philosophers as
pointed to the recognition of two opposite descriptions of Dæmons—the
virtuous and the vicious. In one place, as we have seen, he admits that
Homer does not distinguish between the terms “Gods” and “Dæmons,” and
in his historical _résumé_ of Dæmonology in the “Isis and Osiris,”[249]
he is compelled to make a parallel admission that the Homeric epithet
derived from Dæmons is indiscriminately applied to good and bad actions.
He makes this admission, however, the basis of a subtle conclusion to
the effect that Homer wished to imply that the Dæmons had a confused
and ill-defined character, involving the existence of both good and bad
specimens of the race. Nothing definitely distinguishing between the
two sorts of Dæmons is to be obtained from Plato,[250] and Plutarch
accordingly dwells with special emphasis upon the views of Empedocles and
Xenocrates, who maintained, the one, that Dæmons who had been guilty of
sins of commission or omission were driven about between earth and sky
and sea and sun, until this purifying chastisement restored them to their
natural position in the dæmonic hierarchy;[251] the other, that certain
disgraceful and ill-omened sacrificial observances “are not properly
connected with the worship of the _gods or of good Dæmons_,[252] but that
there are surrounding us certain beings, great and potent, but malignant
too, and hateful, who rejoice in such repulsive ceremonies, and are
thereby restrained from the perpetration of greater evils.” Democritus
and Chrysippus are elsewhere quoted as supporters of the same view.[253]
Plutarch, accordingly, faithful to his principle of making Philosophy
Mystagogue to Religion, has obtained from the philosophers a conviction
that there are two kinds of dæmonic beings, two sets of supernatural
characters with attributes inferior to those of the Divine Nature, and
yet superior to those displayed by the human family. It has already been
shown how naturally the good Dæmons would tend to become identified
with the gods: a passage has just been quoted in which we can see this
process of identification taking place. But Plutarch furnishes still more
emphatic testimony to the necessity of such a consummation.
The group of philosophers gathered together at Delphi to discuss the
cessation of the oracles have fallen into an argument on the nature of
Dæmons, and certain considerations have been introduced which indicate a
liability to vice and death as inherent in their nature. This conclusion
shocks one of the speakers, but the pious Cleombrotus wants to know
in what respect Dæmons will differ from gods if they are endowed with
immortality and immunity from sin.[254] It is most significant, however,
that the famous and beautiful story which Cleombrotus tells in support
of his belief in the mortality of Dæmons, the story of the death of “the
great Pan,” is actually concerned with an announcement of the death of
one whom the popular faith accepted as a deity.[255] Demetrius, who had
just come from Britain, near which were many scattered desert islands,
some of them named after Dæmons and heroes, gives an authentic account
of the death of a Dæmon in the island of Anglesea.[256] Cleombrotus
then shows how a belief in the nativity and mortality of the Dæmons is
not unknown in Greek philosophy, “for the Stoics,” says he, “maintain
this view, _not only with regard to the Dæmons but also with regard to
the gods_—holding one for the Eternal and Immutable, while regarding
the remainder to have been born, and to be subject to death.”[257] The
whole course of the argument, even though the speakers are represented
as unconscious of the fact, leads to the identification of the popular
deities with the Dæmons. This strain of thought elsewhere loses the
unconscious quality, and becomes as definitely dogmatic as Plutarch’s
Academic bent of mind would allow. In the “Isis and Osiris,” for example,
he argues for the probability of the view which assigns the legends of
these two deities not to gods or men, but to Dæmons;[258] and proceeds
still further to breach the partition wall between the two natures by
introducing into his Dæmonology such legends as have raised Osiris and
Isis, on account of their virtue, from the rank of good Dæmons to that of
the gods,[259] and describes them as receiving everywhere the combined
honours of gods and Dæmons; and he appropriates the argument to Greek
religion by comparing this promotion to those of Herakles and Dionysus;
by identifying Isis with Proserpine, and subsequently Osiris with
Dionysus.[260]
But whatever may have been the views explicitly maintained by Plutarch in
this connexion, it is his constant practice to shift on to the shoulders
of the Dæmons the responsibility for all those legends, ceremonies, and
practices, which, however appropriate and necessary parts of the national
faith they may be, are yet inconsistent with the qualities rightly
attributable to Deity.[261] We have already noticed his unwillingness
to impugn the immutability of the Creator by regarding His essence as
capable of metamorphosis into the phenomena of the created world.[262]
“It is,” says Ammonius, “the function of some other god to do and suffer
these changes—or, rather, of some Dæmon appointed to direct Nature in
the processes of generation and destruction.” This relationship of the
Dæmons to the supreme power as conceived by philosophy is more completely
stated in the short tract, “De Fato,”[263] where we are told that (1)
there is a first and supreme Providence which is the intelligence of
the First Deity, or, as one may regard it, His benevolent will towards
all creatures, in accordance with which all _divine_ things universally
received the most admirable and perfect order; (2) the second Providence
is that of the second gods, who move through the sky, by which _human_
affairs are duly ordered, including those relating to the permanence
and preservation of the various species; (3) the third Providence may
properly be regarded as the superintendence of the Dæmons who are
situated near the earth, observing and directing the actions of men. But,
as we have already noted, this formal distinction between (2) and (3)
is not maintained in practice. Cleombrotus, who knows more about these
things than most people, insists that it is not possible that the gods
could have been pleased with festivals and sacrifices, “at which there
are banquets of raw flesh and victims torn in pieces, as well as fastings
and loud lamentations, and often ‘foul language, mad shrieks, and tossing
of dishevelled hair,’” but that all such dread observances must have had
the object of pacifying the anger of the mischievous Dæmons.[264] It was
not to the gods that human sacrifices were welcome; it was not Artemis
who demanded the slaughter of Iphigenia;[265] these were the deeds of
“fierce and violent Dæmons,” who also perpetrated those many rapes, and
inflicted those pestilences and famines which are anciently attributed
to the gods. “All the rapes here, and the wanderings there, that are
celebrated in legends and sacred hymns, all the hidings and flights and
servitudes, _do not belong to the gods_, but represent the chances and
changes incident to the careers of Dæmons.” It was not “holy Apollo” who
was banished from Heaven to serve Admetus;—but here the speech comes to
an end with a rapid change of subject, as if Cleombrotus shrinks from
the assertion that a Dæmon was the real hero of an episode with which
so many beautiful and famous legends of the “hereditary Faith” were
connected. When some of the most celebrated national myths concerning the
gods are assigned to Dæmons, we are not far away from the identification
of the former with the latter, and the consequent degradation of the
gods to the lower rank. It is true that the various speakers on the
subject do not, in so many words, identify the Dæmons with the gods of
the Mythology.[266] They deprive the gods of many of their attributes,
and give them to the Dæmons; they deprive them of others, and give them
to the One Eternal Deity. It is difficult to see how the Gods could
maintain their existence under this twofold tendency of deprivation,
supported as they might be by formal classifications which assigned
them a superior place. Even the Father of Gods and Men—the Zeus of
Homer—turns his eyes “_no very great way ahead_ from Troy to Thrace and
the nomads of the Danube, but the true Zeus gazes upon beauteous and
becoming transformations in many worlds.”[267] To contrast the Zeus “of
Homer” with the “true” Zeus is to do little else than to place the former
in that subordinate rank proper not to the Divine, but to the Dæmonic
character. Plutarch is perfectly consistent in applying this method of
interpretation to the gods of other nations no less than to the gods of
Greece. In the “Isis and Osiris,” he inclines to the belief that these
great Egyptian Deities are themselves only Dæmons, although he refuses
to dogmatize on the point, and gives a series of more or less recognized
explanations of the Egyptian myth. He cannot refrain, however, from using
so appropriate an occasion of denouncing the absurdity of the _Greeks_ in
imputing so many terrible actions and qualities to their gods—“For the
legends of Giants and Titans, handed down among the Greeks, the monstrous
deeds of Cronus, the battle between Pytho and Apollo, the flight of
Dionysus, the wanderings of Demeter, fall not behind the stories told
of Osiris and Typhon, and other legends that one may hear recounted by
mythologists without restraint.”[268]
Such, then, is the relation in which the Dæmons stand to the Divine
nature: they are made the scapegoat for everything obscene, cruel,
selfish, traditionally imputed to the gods; and the Supreme Deity rises
more conspicuously lofty for its freedom from everything that can tend
to drag it down to the baseness of human passions. For Plutarch makes
it very clear that it is the human element in these mixed natures that
originates their disorderly appetites. Although the Dæmons “exceed
mankind in strength and capacity, yet the divine element in their
composition is not pure and unalloyed, inasmuch as it participates in
the faculties of the soul and the sensations of the body, is liable
to pleasure and pain, and to such other conditions as are involved in
these vicissitudes of feeling, and bring disturbance upon all in a
greater or less degree.”[269] It is by virtue of this participation in
the “disturbing” elements of human nature that they are fitted to play
that part between God and man which Plutarch, after Plato, calls the
“interpretative” and the “communicative.”[270] This enables the Dæmons
to play a loftier part than that hitherto assigned them; to respond, in
fact, to that universal craving of humanity for some mediator between
their weakness and the eternal splendour and perfection of the Highest.
The whole question of inspiration and revelation, both oracular and
personal, is bound up with the Dæmonic function, and to both these
spheres of its operation, the public and the private, Plutarch gives
the fullest and most earnest consideration. Previous, therefore, to
discussing this aspect of the Dæmonic character and influence, it will
be necessary to ascertain what were Plutarch’s views on the subject of
inspiration and prophecy, and what was his attitude to that question
of Divination which exercised so great a fascination on the mind of
antiquity.