Michael Psellus on the Operation of Daemons

as were Hercules and Bacchus afterwards, receiving the united honors both of gods and daemons.

From these data we conclude that the word daemon, as signifying in its abstract sense an intelligence, was occasionally applied from the earliest times to deities of the very first order, but afterwards came to be appropriated to deified men; and that the heathen (philosophers excepted) believed in no being identical with or bearing the slightest resemblance to our God. In the language of one who cannot be suspected of any partiality to Christianity, they were “a kind of superstitious atheists, who acknowledged no being that corresponds with our idea of a deity.” (Nat. Hist. of Rel., sect. iv.)

The heathen did not pretend to be acquainted with all the existing daemons or intelligences. So sensible were the Greeks of their ignorance on this head, that they actually had, in Paul's day, an altar at Athens with the inscription, “To an unknown God.” They thought by this contrivance to obviate any bad results that might accrue from their ignorance, and secure to every daemon or intelligence a due share of honor. Paul accordingly, with ingenious artifice, takes advantage of this circumstance to introduce Jesus to their notice as a daemon³ or intelligence they were

³ It seems probable that the line of conduct pursued by the Apostle on this occasion was suggested by the remark of the Athenians themselves, “he seems to be a setter forth of strange intelligences,” (usually rendered daemons); because he preached to them τὸν Ἰησοῦν καὶ τὴν Ἀνάστασιν (Jesus and the Resurrection), they conceived Jesus to be a male intelligence, and Resurrection (Anastasin) a female intelligence, according to their custom deifying abstract qualities, and making them gods and goddesses as suited the gender of the name. Nor can this conduct of the Apostle be termed with any propriety “a pious fraud”. ’Tis true that though the term daemon in its primary use signifies intelligence, his auditors would be very apt to take the term in its more extended sense. The Apostle, however, could not justly be held responsible for the acceptation in which they choose to take his words; yet it must be admitted that the Apostle did not in this instance state the whole truth, but merely so much as suited his immediate purpose of extricating himself from the power of their fanatical philosophers. His principal object seems to have been to show that on their own principles...