To these genii might reasonably be added the Fate (ἡ Μοῖρα or, more rarely, ἡ Τύχη) of each individual. But these lesser Fates, as well as the great Three, have already been discussed, and there is nothing to add here save that by virtue of the close connexion of each lesser Fate with the life of one man these too might be numbered among genii.
The same belief in a guardian-deity presiding over each human life is to be found throughout ancient Greek literature. In Homer the name for such a genius is Κὴρ (at any rate if it be of an evil sort), in later writers δαίμων—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 λαγχάνειν 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[776], 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[777].’ After Homer the word δαίμων is preferred, but there is no change in the idea. The famous saying of Heraclitus, ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμον, ‘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[778],’ 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[779] 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[780].
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[781]’ is a complaint of a type by no means rare in Greek literature, and the word κακοδαίμων came as readily as εὐδαίμων to men’s lips[782].
From these passages it is evident that in general each man was believed to have one, and only one, attendant genius, and his happiness or misery to depend on the character of the guardian allotted to him by fate. But sometimes this injustice of destiny was obviated by a belief similar to the modern belief in both good and bad angels in attendance on each man. The comment of Servius on Vergil’s line, ‘Quisque suos patimur manes[783],’ sets forth this view: ‘when we are born two Genii are allotted to us, one who exhorts us to good, the other who perverts us to evil.’
As in modern so in ancient times these genii were rarely visible to the men whom they guarded. The genius of Socrates, which, like those of other men past and present, had been, so he held, divinely appointed to wait upon him from his childhood onward[784], spoke to him indeed in a voice which he could hear[785] (just perhaps as the priestess of Delphi heard the voice of Apollo[786]), but ever remained unseen.
CHAPTER III.
THE COMMUNION OF GODS AND MEN.
Ἔτι τοίνυν καὶ θυσίαι πᾶσαι καὶ οἷς μαντικὴ ἐπιστατεῖ—ταῦτα δ’ ἐστὶν ἡ περὶ θεους τε καὶ ἀνθρώπους πρὸς ἀλλήλους κοινωνία—οὐ περὶ ἄλλο τί ἐστιν ἢ περὶ Ἔρωτος φυλακήν τε καὶ ἴασιν.