Where Dæmons Come From

[sdi]

When gods alike and mortals rose to birth,
A golden race th' immortals form'd on earth
Of many-languaged men: they lived of old
When Saturn reign'd in heaven, an age of gold.
Like gods they lived, with calm untroubled mind;
Free from the toils and anguish of our kind:
Nor e'er decrepit age mishaped their frame,
The hand's, the foot's proportion still the same.
Strangers to ill, their lives in feasts flow'd by:
Wealthy in flocks; dear to the blest on high:
Dying they sank in sleep, nor seem'd to die.
Theirs was each good; the life-sustaining soil
Yielded its copious fruts, unbribed by toil:
They with abundant goods midst quiet lands
All willing shared the gatherings of their hands.

When earth's dark womb had closed this race around,
High Jove as dæmons raised them from the ground.
Earth-wandering 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 crooked wrongs arise:
Their kingly state; and, delegate from heaven,
By their vicarious hands the wealth of fields is given.

(Hesiod, Works and Days, as translated by Sir Charles Abraham Elton)

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By this, Hesiod is simply saying that the beings we call "dæmons" or "angels" are those that never left the Intellectual realm for the sensible; living a blessed, ageless, toil-free existence under Saturn's reign (Saturn being the Intellect, see Enneads III 5 and V 8).

(I guess sometimes you don't need mental gymnastics to find theology in Hesiod.)

Comments

[sdi]

Oh, look, Plato spills the beans for us in the Cratylus. One wonders if I should have just read him before speculating, myself!

"Concerning dæmons? And truly, Hermogenes, [...] do you not know who those dæmons are which Hesiod speaks of?"

"I do not."

"And are you ignorant that he says, the golden race of men was first generated? [...] He says, therefore, concerning this, 'that after this race was concealed by Fate, it produced dæmons denominated holy, terrestrial, good, expellers of evil, and guardians of mortal men.' [...] I think, indeed, that he calls it a golden race, not as naturally composed from gold, but as being beautiful and good: but I infer this, from his denominating our race an iron one."