XLIX] Studies in primitive Greek religion. 81 



class of the spiritual hierarchy is, in man}' cases, just as 

 difficult to decide as it is difficult to draw an exact line between 

 obsession by a demon outside and possession by a demon 

 inside. The latter and perhaps most primitive idea appears, 

 for instance, in a passage in the fifth book of the Odyssey 

 where we read about the man who „is slowly pining away 

 since an evil daemon has seized on him" ^). — A special kind 

 of disease-bringiug spirits we meet in the Keres, whose origin 

 likewise goes back to most ancient times in the history of the 

 Greeks. The Keres were no disease-demons xar' eS.oxijv . 

 nor were they originally conceived of as being in their nature 

 ghosts or human souls 2), although at certain times they may 

 have been identified with such. They were creations of that 

 savage imagination which not only sees a living agent or the 

 abode of a supernatural being in most objects of nature but, 

 moreover, assumes the existence of small invisible evil-working 

 spirits — not inaptly compared with our modefn bacilli — 

 which swarm about in the whole universe, on the earth, in 

 the sea, in the air, attach themselves to things and persons, 

 causing corruption and pollution, disease and death, all mishaps 

 losses, and pains in general, to which the human race is sub- 

 jected 3). Porphyry, in a fragment preserved by Eusebius, 

 clearly depicts this phase of the Greek religious view 

 of the world, which in fact the growth of civilisation and 

 philosophy did not extinguish, and which was adopted 

 and further developed by early Christian writers. Every 

 house, and every body, Porphyry declares, is full of such 

 noviqQol Satfxoveg, and forms of ceremonial purification such as 

 beating the air and so forth, have no other object but that of 

 driving away the importunate swarms of these invisible, but 

 dangerous beings. These evil spirits delight in food, and espe- 

 cially in blood and impurities; they settle like flies on us, pe- 



^) Horn. 0^. V, 395 : ... év vovam ■nffTui xoarén äXytä jtåaxcoi\ bf]- 

 QÖv rrjXÖiJLEVog, orvyeQÖg öé ol txQO.^ baincov. 



^) This is the opinion of Prof. Rohde, Psyche, I, p. 10. Anm. 1, and I, p. 

 239, 240, Anm., an opinion which seems to be shared by Miss Harrison, Pro- 

 legomena, p. 165. This theory, however, has as little foundation as the theory 

 that the Erinyes were primarily nothing but ghosts of dead men. 



3) Cf. Frazer, The Gniden Bongh, III, p. 40. 



