80 Rafael Karsten. [N:o 1 



the observed fact that the burning rays of the sun diiring the 

 hot season are able to cause pestilence and sudden death. The 

 idea of actual disease-demons may, however, have been prepond- 

 eraut in ihe medical view of the early Greeks. 



About the nature of these disease-demons probably the 

 Greeks, themselves as a rule, did not form a clear idea. In 

 some cases, however, they seera to have been thought of as 

 being disembodied souls of dead men, which, as we have seen ^), 

 were often beheved to visit the living wiih sickness and death. 

 This beliei must have been common especially in the låter 

 times of Antiquity in accordance with the growing tendency to 

 identify the daif^ioveg with the ghosts of departed. Thus, for 

 instance, Theophrastus in his Life of Apollonius of Tyana tells 

 US about an insane boy Avho was possessed by a demon which 

 expressh' declares through the mouth of his victim that he is 

 the shade of a man wlio has fallen in war and afterwards 

 transferred himself into that boy 2). A custom which seems 

 to liave been rather common in classical Greece, namely, to 

 devote adversaries to the malevolent spirits of the dead 

 and to other underworld deities by certain magical incanta- 

 tions, depended upon the the same belief in the pernicious in- 

 fluence which these beings were able to inflict. A lead tablet 

 found in Crete clearly describes the different sorts of evils, 

 fever, and ague, and so forth, which shall befall one who has 

 been abandoned to such underworld gods ^). 



As pointed out, me must, however, assume that as a rule 

 the primitive Greeks did not refer their disease-spirits to any 

 special category of supernatural beings. Whether the demons 

 which were looked upon as authors of disease were conceived 

 of as disembodied human souls or as belonging to some other 



*) Sxipra, p. 63, 



-) Philostr. De Tyan. Apoll. III, 38, — Cf. Josephus, De hello J\id. 

 VII, 6, 3: TU yan xuÅoviieva öaL^övca — ravra ök jtovi]Qwv iariv årf^Qohi-cov 

 .inimaTa — roli ^maiv eiaövuueva xal xxeivavra rovs ^oi^&dai ,U7) Tvyxd- 

 VOVTUi avTi^. 



^) Wuensch, Defix. tah. Att. praef. IX A: TcäoL lolg xa-zolg 7i£L()av öåaei, 

 ■ML (foLxrj xal :i:v()tTcp jQnuim -xai TtraQraim xal éXécpavrt xai ykmaari uoXv^- 

 öov, .Tfoi. yuL lina •Aayik xal oXérQia yivtrai etc. 



