Socrates’ Daimon

Another important essay for Plutarch’s daimonology is De genio Socratis (Περὶ τοῦ Σωκράτους δαιμονίου), often translated as On the Sign of Socrates.18 (The

14  Ibid., 388–89: . . . οἱ δαιμόνων γένος μὴ ἀπολείποντες . . . πᾶντα φύρειν ἅμα καὶ ταράττειν ἀναγκάζουσιν ἡμᾶς . . .’. ‘. . . those who refuse to leave us the race of daimons . . . force us to a disorderly confusion of all things. . . .’ (Trans. Babbitt, slightly modified.) This may show a connection between daimons, time and the creation of order (see below, 3.5, 44), or just that daimons are essential to cosmic order. Timaeus 37d describes the chronos that came into being when cosmos arose from chaos, but Cleombrotus’s statement seems to imply that without the mediating presence of daimons disorder would arise again. In Platonic Questions 1007c–e and The Generation of the Soul in the Timaeus 1014b, Plutarch refers to disorderly time or movement before the cosmos was created; F. E. Brenk, ‘Time as Structure in Plutarch’s The Daimonion of Sokrates’, in Relighting the Souls: Studies in Plutarch, in Greek Literature, Religion and Philosophy, and in the New Testament Background, ed. Frederick E. Brenk (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1998), 59–81, here 74, cites these passages (but with a different goal in mind).

15  Note that this is the same word (in verbal form) as the ‘ministering’ mentioned by Cleombrotus at 416f: . . . τὴν ἑρμηνευτικὴν . . . καὶ διακονικὴν . . . φύσιν. . . .

16  Antiochus, Thesaurus, CCAG VII, 127.24–26: Ἡ δὲ Σελήνη προσγειοτέρα οὖσα τὰς ἀπορροίας τῶν ἄνωθεν αὐτῆς δεχομένη ἀστέρων καὶ διακονοῦσα πρὸς τὰ περίγεια, ἄρχει τοῦ ἀνθρωπίνου σώματος παντός.

17  Valens, I, 1.1 (Pingree, 1.5–7): [sc. ὁ Ἥλιος] σημαίνει . . . βασιλείαν, ἡγεμονίαν . . . κρίσιν . . . προ στασίαν ὀχλικήν . . . δεσπότην. . . . 

18  Translating daimonion as ‘divine sign’ may stem from Plato’s Apology 40b, where the manifestation of the daimonion is called ‘the sign of the god’ (τὸ τοῦ θεοῦ σημεῖον).

Latin equivalent of δαίμων is given as genius, with which the Greek δαίμων had commonalities, although was not identical.)19 Plutarch compares Socrates’

daimonion to Athena in the Iliad, as something that ‘alone “showed him the

way, illumining his path”, in matters obscure and non-logical to human under- standing (φρόνησις)’ (580d).20 Thus the daimonic illumines—like the astrolog- ical Sun and Moon, the luminaries, who rule sight (physical and mental [in] sight), eyes and foreknowing (pronoia).21 The Sun and the Lot of Daimon are instruments of this particular illumination, both signifying φρόνησις (which may be described not only as ‘understanding’ but as ‘intentional mind’).22 Plato’s Epistle VII says that when one acquires phronēsis, along with nous, it ‘bursts out in a light’ (344b7).23

The daimon brings us what we already know, which only needs to be brought to consciousness and light, which the daimon can provide. And the more we

In addition to Apology 40b, the daimonion is also called a ‘sign’ (σημεῖον) in Theages 129b, d, and Phaedrus 242b. P. Hardie, ‘Sign Language in On the Sign of Socrates’, in Plutarchea Lovaniensia: A Miscellany of Essays on Plutarch, ed. Luc Van der Stockt, Studia Hellenistica (Louvain: Universitas Catholica Lovaniensis, 1996), 136, points out the ‘irony . . . in the cur- rent English translation as “Sign”, [because] τὸ δαιμόνιον in fact is the one case of a non- sign in the De genio, a signified . . . without a signifier, meaning working directly on the intelligence of Socrates.’ Daimonic communication is immediate and unmediated. 19  For an excellent discussion of genius in antiquity, see J. C. Nitzsche, The Genius Figure in

Antiquity and the Middle Ages (New York/London: Columbia University Press, 1975), esp. chapters 1 and 2. See also Apuleius on genius, De deo Socratis, XV.151: Apuleius, De philoso­ phia libri, ed. Claudio Moreschini, (Stuttgart/Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1991), 25; Apuleius, Rhetorical works, trans. Stephen Harrison, John Hilton, and Vincent Hunink (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 207.

20  Plutarch, De genio Socratis, trans. Phillip H. De Lacy and Benedict Einarson, in Moralia, VII (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959, repr. 2000), 404–05: . . . ἥ ‘μόνη ‘οἱ πρόσθεν ἰοῦσα τίθει φάος’ ἐν πράγμασιν ἀδήλοις καὶ πρὸς ἀνθρωπίνην ἀσυλλογίστοις φρόνησιν. . . . (Iliad XX.95; Moralia, VII, 405, note d, also cites Odyssey XIX.34.) These and subsequent transla- tions from the essays in Moralia, VII are modified from De Lacy-Einarson’s. D. A. Russell in H.-G. Nesselrath, ed., Plutarch On the daimonion, 33, translates the Iliad phrase more literally: ‘. . . “went before him and gave light” ’.

21  Valens, I, 1.1–2, 5, 47.

22  Paulus, ch. 23, calls the Lot of Daimon φρόνησις; for Valens (I, 1.1) the Sun is φρόνησις. The first sense definition in LSJ for φρόνησις is ‘purpose, intention’.

23  Epistula VII, 344b7 (Burnet, vol. 5.2): . . . ἐξέλαμψε φρόνησις περὶ ἕκαστον καὶ νοῦς. . . . This sudden moment of clarity will not be unfamiliar to anyone involved in creative endeav- ours, including astrologers who report that, in the best readings, they see the meaning of the symbols in the chart with just such brilliance. See G. Cornelius, The Moment of Astrology: Origins in Divination, 2nd ed. (Bournemouth: The Wessex Astrologer, 2004).

follow and are encouraged by our daimon, the more our phronēsis increases. In Timaeus 90b–c, phronēsis grows in power as one cultivates one’s daimon:

But he who has seriously devoted himself to learning and to true thoughts (phronēseis), and has exercised these qualities above all his others, must necessarily and inevitably think thoughts (phronein) that are immortal and divine, if he lays hold of truth . . . and inasmuch as he is always tend- ing his divine part and keeping the daimon who dwells together with him well-ranked, he must be especially good-spirited (eudaimōn).24

Within De genio Socratis, the Myth of Timarchus reveals a striking vision of astrological, cosmological and religious imagery. Though its important escha- tology cannot be examined here,25 its depiction of souls and daimons provides a glimpse of second-century belief in how daimons interact with humans. It is

24  Timaeus 90b6–c2, 4–6 (Burnet, vol. 4): . . . τῷ δὲ περὶ φιλομαθίαν καὶ περὶ τὰς ἀληθεῖς φρονήσεις ἐσπουδακότι καὶ ταῦτα μάλιστα τῶν αὐτοῦ γεγυμνασμένῳ, φρονεῖν μὲν ἀθάνατα καὶ θεῖα, ἄνπερ ἀληθείας ἐφάπτηται, πᾶσα ἀνάγκη που . . . ἅτε δὲ ἀεὶ θεραπεύοντα τὸ θεῖον ἔχοντα τε αὐτὸν εὖ κεκοσμημένον τὸν δαίμονα ξύνοικον ἑαυτῷ διαφερόντως εὐδαίμονα εἶναι. Consulting the translations of Bury, in Plato, Timaeus, trans. R. G. Bury, in Plato, IX (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929, repr. 1989), 246–247 (Bury reads ἐν αὐτῷ for Burnet’s ἑαυτῷ in c5); Finamore, ‘Plutarch and Apuleius’, 39; and the enlightening commentary of A. E. Taylor, A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928), 633–34 (I thank Stephan Heilen for this reference and advice on the translation). For another example of θεραπεύειν in context with caring for the daimon, cf. Pindar, Pythian Odes III, 108–09 (Maehler and Snell): ‘and I will revere the daimon always working in my mind, tending it according to my resources’, τὸν δ’ ἀμφέποντ’ αἰεὶ φρασίν / δαίμον’ ἀσκήσω κατ’ ἐμὰν θεραπεύων μαχανάν. I take εὖ κεκοσμημένον with δαίμονα. My ‘especially good-spirited’ rather than ‘happy’ is meant to show the wordplay between δαίμων and εὐδαίμων. This seems to be a different kind of phronēsis than the ‘practical wisdom’ of Aristotle. Yet see the argument of Christopher Long that there are connections between the Platonic idea of phronēsis and the Aristotelian one: C. P. Long, The Ethics of Ontology: Rethinking an Aristotelian Legacy (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004), 122–24. For this passage in service to the concept of the personal daimon, see below, 3.1.

25  See, in particular, within scholarship covering this part of the essay, W. Deuse, ‘Plutarch’s eschatalogical myths’, in Plutarch On the daimonion of Socrates: Human Liberation, Divine Guidance, and Philosophy, ed. Heinz-Günther Nesselrath, SAPERE (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 169–198; Y. Vernière, Symboles et mythes dans la pensée de Plutarque (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1977), esp. 153–215; Brenk, In Mist Apparelled, 136–44; G. Mameli Lattanzi, Il ‘De Genio Socratis’ di Plutarco (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1933), 49–63; for the astral components, A. Pérez Jiménez, ‘Elementi astrali nei miti di Plutarco’, in Plutarco e la religione. Atti del VI Convegno plutarcheo (Ravello, 29–31 maggio 1995), ed. Italo Gallo (Naples: M. D’Auria Editore, 1996), 297–309.

the story of an incubation26 by a (fictional) disciple of Socrates.27 Timarchus’s soul leaves its body and sees a vision of the universe, not unlike what happens to Er in the other famous myth. Here, the guide for his cosmological tour is a daimonic voice28 who explains that the moon rescues the souls deemed wor- thy to escape the reincarnation cycle (and these become daimons), but the others fall away from her and are borne to another life. Timarchus cannot see this, but only ‘many stars shaking29 around the chasm, others sinking down into it, and others darting up30 again from below’ (591d).31 He is told these are daimons themselves, seen as lights which connect to their souls and bodies in life, but released at death. Souls that are too subject to passion and desire sink wholly into the body; in others the purest part remains outside (591d–e). This part is attached like a buoy to the top of the head, and holds the soul upright.

Nous is the part that is free from passion, which holds the soul upright; we 26  For more on the practice of incubation, see P. Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom

(Inverness, CA: The Golden Sufi Center, 1999), esp. Part Two, 77–89, 101–14.

27  On ‘Timarchus’ as fictional, see Russell in Nesselrath, ed., Plutarch On the daimonion, 9 and 94, n. 193; De Lacy and Einarson, in Moralia VII, 365, note a. Russell suggests Plutarch’s choice of the name ‘Timarchus’ comes from a character in Theages 129a; De Lacy-Einarson suggest the name mimics Plutarch’s own. De Lacy-Einarson and Vernière, Symboles et Mythes, 94, 105, note that both Timarchus and Plutarch are Chaeronean/Boeotian. One could also speculate that ‘Timarchus of Chaeronea’ amalgamates ‘Timaeus’ and ‘Plutarchus of Chaeronea’.

28  There are disagreements about whether the voice is that of a daimon. For example, Finamore, ‘Plutarch and Apuleius’, 47 and n. 53, thinks its origin is uncertain; in Nesselrath, ed., Plutarch On the daimonion, Russell, 95, n. 215, and Deuse, 191, declare it a lunar dai- mon. I wonder if the ‘voice’ is meant to recall the voice of Socrates’ daimonion.

29  Greek παλλομένους, which in this middle form means precisely ‘draw’ or ‘cast’ lots, refer- ring to the shaking of the lots before they are cast (LSJ, s.v. πάλλω). In the Myth of Er (Republic 617d-e), the souls choose their daimon in an order determined by lot. Using πάλλω here in connection to the stars/daimons may thus be intentional. Modern etymol- ogy (Chantraine, Tome I, 246–47; Frisk, Band I, 340–41) gives possible derivation of δαίμων from δαίομαι, allot, divide. We could compare the shaking of the dice to humans shaking, both outwardly and inwardly (the flutter in the stomach) when they are about to make a decision.

30  A. Setaioli, ‘The Daimon in Timarchus’ Cosmic Vision (Plu. De Gen. Socr. 22, 590B–592E)’, in Nomos, Dike and Cosmos in Plutarch, ed. José Ribeiro Ferreira, Delfim F. Leão, and Carlos A. Martins de Jesus (Coimbra: Centro de Estudios Clássicos e Humanísticos da Universidade de Coimbra, 2012), 109–19, here 112 and n. 10, points out that Plato links the same verb ᾄττειν, ‘dart’, to stars in Republic 621b (the Myth of Er).

31  De genio Socratis 591d1–3, trans. De Lacy-Einarson, in Moralia, VII, 470–471: . . . πολλοὺς ἀστέρας περὶ τὸ χάσμα παλλομένους, ἑτέρους δὲ καταδυομένους εἰς αὐτό, τοὺς δὲ ᾄττοντας αὖ κάτωθεν.

think the nous is in us, just as some think a reflected object is in the mirror that reflects it, but in fact it is a daimon external to the body that is nous (591e).

The daimonic voice tells Timarchus that what he thinks are extinguished stars are souls that have sunk completely into the body, the stars that appear from below are the souls with their daimons floating back from the body after death, and the stars moving about above are the daimons of men ‘said to have

nous’ (νοῦν ἔχειν λεγομένων) (591f). This nous/daimon resides in the highest

part of the soul (591e).32

Timarchus sees that some stars bob about evenly, but some twist and turn and cannot hold a steady course. The souls ruled by their passions are the ones that are twisting, while those which consent to be ruled by their

nous/daimon keep an even course. These are the souls that follow their per-

sonal daimon (οἰκεῖος δαίμων) from birth (592c) and are rewarded by its aid (594a). The straightness of the obedient soul’s path, and the twisting of the passionate one’s, is analogous, in astronomy, to the steady course of the sun in diurnal motion, and the moon’s more wandering course, which changes in speed, latitude and proximity to earth as it makes its revolution.

The Moirai make an appearance here (591b), as Plutarch puts them in charge of certain regions of the cosmos: Atropos at the border of the fixed stars (where the Monad links life and motion), Clotho on the Sun (where nous links motion and birth), Lachesis on the Moon (where Nature [phusis] links birth and decay).

1.4 Where Daimons Dwell: The Face in the Moon

Vettius Valens calls the Sun the light of the mind and the instrument of the soul’s sense-perception.33 He says that the Moon, ‘born from the reflection of

32  An idea commonly agreed to derive from Timaeus 90a: see W. Hamilton, ‘The Myth in Plutarch’s De Genio (589F–592E)’, CQ 28, no. 3/4 (1934): 175–82, here 180–81; G. Soury, La démonologie de Plutarque: essai sur les idées religieuses et les mythes d’un platonicien éclectique (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1942), 160; De Lacy and Einarson, in Moralia VII, 471 n. d; Vernière, Symboles et mythes, 128; Setaioli, ‘The Daimon in Timarchus’, 112–13; M. Broze and C. Van Liefferinge, ‘Le démon personnel et son rôle dans l’ascension théurgique chez Jamblique’, in De Socrate à Tintin. Anges gardiens et démons familiers de l’Antiquité à nos jours, ed. Jean-Patrice Boudet, Philippe Faure, and Christian Renoux (Rennes: Presses uni- versitaires de Rennes, 2011), 74–75. See also the discussion of nous/daimon in Timotin, Démonologie, 75–81, who suggests (79) that it links the human soul and intellect to the world-soul and intellect. See below, 3.1, for more on this passage in connection with the personal daimon, an idea also explored by Setaioli, 113–15.

the solar light . . . in a nativity signifies humans’ life, body. . . .’34 Valens’ asser- tion that the moon reflects the sun’s light is not his discovery. Plutarch ascribes that observation to Empedocles35 in De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet. This essay, an elaborate eschatology of the cosmos and the moon’s place within it, again places daimons as inhabitants of the moon (944c–e). The moon is said to be a part of the aither, that highest part of air (943d, e).36 (In the Epinomis, some, but not all, daimons also inhabit the aither.37 As Valens notes, quoting Orpheus: ‘A human soul is rooted in aither.’38) Purified souls, especially those who have moved the straightest in life, stay here and become daimons. The moon is a repository for souls and is ruled by Persephone. (There are simi- larities with De genio Socratis here.)39 Humans are composed of three parts: body, furnished by the earth; soul, furnished by the moon; and mind (nous) furnished by the sun, just as it furnishes light to the moon (943a).40

34  Valens, I, 1.4 (Pingree, 1.14–16): <Ἡ> δὲ Σελήνη γενομένη μὲν ἐκ τῆς ἀντανακλάσεως τοῦ ἡλιακοῦ φωτὸς . . . σημαίνει μὲν κατὰ γένεσιν ἀνθρώποις ζωήν, σῶμα. . . .

35  At 929e Plutarch says (Cherniss’s translation): ‘There remains the theory of Empedocles that the moonlight which we see comes from the moon’s reflection of the sun’; then quoting Empedocles: ‘ “Thus, having struck the moon’s broad disk, the ray” comes to us in a refluence weak and faint . . .’ (see Empedocles, Frag. B43, in D-K I, 330.20: ὣς αὐγὴ τύψασα σεληναίης κύκλον εὐρύν). See also 936f, 938e on the moon as reflector of the sun’s light. Philo, De providentia II 70, attributes the same to Empedocles (in Aucher’s Latin version of an Armenian text: ‘lumen accipiens lunaris globus magnum largumque . . .’.) See Philo of Alexandria, De providentia I et II, trans., intro. and annot. Mireille Hadas- Lebel (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1973), 300. Note also that in Plato, Republic 616e–617a, the moon’s circle gains its colour by reflecting the sun’s light.

36  De facie, 943d9–10: . . . τῷ περὶ τὴν σελήνην αἰθέρι . . . ; 943e10: . . . οὕτως τῷ αἰθέρι λέγουσι τὴν σελήνην ἀνακεκραμένην. . . . In Moralia, XII, 202, 204.

37  See Epinomis, 984d–e. See also L. Tarán, Academica: Plato, Philip of Opus, and the Pseudo­ Platonic Epinomis (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1975), 42–46. Tarán argues, 44, that daimons in Epinomis are only of aither (an argument which does not quite convince me). In Bacchylides, 3.35–38, the 5th-century BCE poet has Croesus address a daimon by raising his hands to the aither: see Bacchylides et al., Bacchylides, Corinna and Others, ed. and trans. David A. Campbell, in Greek Lyric, IV (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 128–29.

38  Valens, IX, 1.12 (Pingree, 317.20): ψυχὴ δ’ ἀνθρώποισιν ἀπ’ αἰθέρος ἐρρίζωται. (The same in O. Kern, Orphicorum fragmenta (Berlin: Weidmann, 1922), 244, Fr. 228a.) Cf. also Chapter 10, 1.8.

39  See the more extensive comparison between the 2 myths in Hamilton, ‘The Myth in De genio’, esp. 176–77.

40  De facie, 943a9–11, in Moralia, XII, 198: . . . τὸ μὲν σῶμα ἡ γῆ τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν ἡ σελήνη τὸν δὲ νοῦν ὁ ἥλιος παρέσχεν εἰς τὴν γένεσιν <τἀνθρώπῳ> ὥσπερ αὐ<τῇ> τῇ σελήνῃ τὸ φέγγος. F. Cumont, ‘La théologie solaire du paganisme romain’, in Mémoires présentés pars divers savants à

The Moirai, too, are involved: ‘Of the three Fates too Atropos enthroned in the sun initiates generation, Clotho in motion on the moon mingles and binds together, and finally upon the earth Lachesis too puts her hand to the task, she who has the largest share in fortune/chance (tuchē).’41

This triad of earth, moon and sun becomes the macrocosmic matrix for the generation of the human body, soul and mind. A variation on this theme also appears in astrology, where the Sun represents nous and daimon, and the Moon body and fortune.42 As (respectively) the lots of the Moon and Sun, the Lots of Fortune and Daimon expand these designations.43 The Fortune lot combines

De facie’s functions of the earth and the Moon, since its concerns are with the

body and what happens to it in the physical world; the Daimon lot combines the functions of De facie’s Sun and Moon, ruling over matters concerning both mind and soul.44

In the astrological praxis of these lots, which may be performed for purely mundane reasons, is a tangible demonstration of philosophical and even reli- gious principles behind their formation. Both in astrology and in Plutarch, the pairs of sun and moon, and the triads of mind, soul and body amalgamate into systems reflecting similar sensibilities. Mind and soul, Sun and Moon, matter

l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles­Lettres (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1909), 18 and n. 3, 27–29, suggests that Plutarch derived the eschatalogical ideas in De facie from Posidonius. 41  945c12–945d4: καὶ τριῶν Μοιρῶν ἡ μὲν Ἄτροπος περὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἱδρυμένη τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐνδίδωσι τῆς

γενέσεως, ἡ δὲ Κλωθὼ περὶ τὴν σελήνην φερομένη συνδεῖ καὶ μίγνυσιν, ἐσχάτη δὲ συνεφάπτεται περὶ γῆν ἡ Λάχεσις ᾗ πλεῖστον τύχης μέτεστι. (Trans. Cherniss.) Note the different assign- ments of the Fates to those in De genio 591b, where Clotho is associated with the sun and Lachesis with the moon. Both of De genio’s assignments involve birth, but one (Clotho) highlights the connections between (heavenly) movement and birth, while the other (Lachesis) emphasises the result of earthly incarnation (decay following birth). Since the moon is a hybrid of the heavenly and earthly, there is some justification for assigning it to two different Moirai in two contexts. See De Lacy-Einarson, 221 note b; also Hamilton’s reconciliation of these two schemes (Hamilton, ‘The Myth in De genio’, 177).

42  Sun: Valens, IV, 4.2; Paulus, ch. 23. Moon: Valens, I, 1.4, IV, 4.2, IX, 2.2; Paulus, ch. 23. Cumont’s essay (as in n. 40) provides the astrological and near eastern context for the ‘solar theology’ popular in the Greco-Roman period.

43  See the definition and description of these in the Introduction, 3.2 and Fig. I.2, 7–8. 44  Paulus, ch. 23 (Boer, 49.17–22), says: ‘And Fortune signifies all things about the body and

actions throughout life. It becomes indicative of acquisition, reputation and privilege. Daimon happens to be lord of soul, temper, intentional mind and every capability . . .’. καὶ ἡ μὲν Τύχη σημαίνει τὰ περὶ τοῦ σώματος πάντα καὶ τὰς κατὰ βίον πράξεις· κτήσεως τε καὶ δόξης καὶ προεδρίας δηλωτικὴ καθέστηκεν. ὁ δὲ Δαίμων ψυχῆς καὶ τρόπου καὶ φρονήσεως καὶ δυναστείας πάσης κύριος τυγχάνει. . . . See also Antiochus in CCAG I, 160.12–16 (find quota- tion in the Introduction, 8, n. 28); Valens II, 20.1; Chapter 9, Table 9.1, 306 in this book.

and spirit, all are integrated in an astrology that seems very close to the philo- sophical and religious system described by Plutarch.