As we read Homer, we notice that in many different places he distinctively calls the good godlike The word is found forty-four times in Homer. and peers of the gods Homer employs this expression sixty-two times. and having prudence gained from the gods,See Homer, vi. 12. but that the epithet derived from the demigods (or daemons) he uses of the worthy and worthless alikeCf. 415 a, infra.; for example: Daemon-possessed, come on! Why seek you to frighten the Argives Thus ?, xiii. 810. and again When for the fourth time onward he came with a rush, like a daemonIbid. v. 438, xiv. 705, xx. 447.; and Daemon-possessed, in what do Priam and children of Priam Work you such ill that your soul is ever relentlessly eager Ilium, fair-built city, to bring to complete desolation ?Ibid. iv. 31. The assumption, then, is that the demigods (or daemons) have a complex and inconsistent nature and purpose; wherefore PlatoPlato, , 717 a, assigns the Even and the Left to the chthonic deities, and Plutarch quite correctly derives his statement from this. assigns to the Olympian gods right-hand qualities and odd numbers, and to the demigods the opposite of these. Xenocrates also is of the opinion that such days as are days of ill omen, and such festivals as have associated with them either beatings or lamentations or fastings or scurrilous language or ribald jests have no relation to the honours paid to the gods or to worthy demigods, but he believes that there exist in the space about us certain great and powerful natures, obdurate, however, and morose, which take pleasure in such things as these, and, if they succeed in obtaining them, resort to nothing worse.

Then again, Hesiod calls the worthy and good demigods holy deities and guardians of mortals Hesiod, , 123 and 253. Cf. , 431 e, infra. and Givers of wealth, and having therein a reward that is kingly., 126, repeated in 417 b, infra. Plato, 202 e. Cf. also , 415 a and 416 c-f, infra, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, i. 77. calls this class of beings an interpretative and ministering class, midway between gods and men, in that they convey thither the prayers and petitions of men, and thence they bring hither the oracles and the gifts of good things.

EmpedoclesPart of a longer passage from Empedocles; Cf. H. Diels, , i. p. 267, Empedocles, no. 115, 9-12. Cf. also , 830 f. says also that the demigods must pay the penalty for the sins that they commit and the duties that they neglect: Might of the Heavens chases them forth to the realm of the Ocean; Ocean spews them out on the soil of the Earth, and Earth drives them Straight to the rays of the tireless Sun, who consigns them to Heaven’s Whirlings; thus one from another receives them, but ever with loathing; until, when they have thus been chastened and purified, they recover the place and position to which they belong in accord with Nature.