The religion of Plutarch

by John Oakesmith

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]