In Mythology and Philosophy
Homer's use of the words theoí (θεοί: "gods") and daímones (δαίμονες), suggest that while distinct, they are similar in kind. Later writers developed the distinction between the two. In Cratylus (398 b), Plato speculates that the etymology of daimôn/daēmones (δαίμονες: deity/daêmôn δαήμονες) is from knowing or wise, however, it is more probably daiō (δαίω: "to divide, to distribute destinies, to allot").
In Plato's Symposium, the priestess Diotima teaches Socrates that love is not a god, but rather a "great daemon" (202d). She goes on to explain that "everything daemonic is between divine and mortal" (202d-e), and she describes daemons as "interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above..." (202e). In Plato's Apology of Socrates, Socrates claimed to have a daimonion (literally, a "divine something") that frequently warned him - in the form of a "voice" - against mistakes but never told him what to do. However, the Platonic Socrates never refers to the daimonion as a daimōn; it was always an impersonal "something" or "sign". Regarding the charge brought against Socrates in 399, Plato surmised “Socrates does wrong because he does not believe in the gods in whom the city believes, but introduces other daemonic beings…” Burkert notes that “a special being watches over each individual, a daimon who has obtained the person at his birth by lot, is an idea which we find in Plato, undoubtedly from earlier tradition. The famous, paradoxical saying of Heraclitus is already directed against such a view: 'character is for man his daimon'”.
Read more about this topic: Daemon (classical Mythology)
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