olykrates died a wretched
death. Timotheus, according to Plutarch, provoked Fortune by his
arrogance.]

[Footnote 181: This word ([Greek: daimon]) often occurs in Plutarch.
In order to understand it, we must first banish from our minds the
modern notions attached to the word Daemon. A little further, Sulla
speaks of what the daemon ([Greek: to daimonion]) enjoins during the
night. People in ancient times attached great importance to dreams,
because they were considered as a medium by which the gods
communicated with men. There is great difficulty in translating an
ancient writer on account of the terms used in speaking of superhuman
powers.

Apuleius, who lived in the second century of our aera and was
consequently nearly a contemporary of Plutarch, has explained this
doctrine of daemons in his treatise _On the God of Sokrates_. "Moreover
there are certain divine middle powers, situated in this interval
between the highest ether and earth, which is in the lowest place,
through whom our desires and deserts pass to the gods. These are
called by a Greek name daemons, who being placed between the
terrestrial and celestial inhabitants, transmit prayers from the one
and gifts from the other. They likewise carry supplications from the
one and auxiliaries from the other as certain interpreters and
saluters of both. Through these same daemons, as Plato says in the
_Banquet_, all denunciations, the various miracles of enchanters, and
all the species of presages, are directed. Prefects, from among the
number of these, providentially attend to everything, according to the
province assigned to each; either by the formation of dreams, or
causing the fissures in entrails, or governing the flight of some
birds, and instructing the song of others, or by inspiring prophets,
or hurling thunder, or producing the coruscations of lightning in the
clouds, or causing other things to take place from which we obtain a
knowledge of future events. And it is requisite to think that all
these particulars are effected by the will, the power, and authority
of the celestial gods, but by the compliance, operations, and
ministrant offices of daemons."--T. Taylor's Translation: he adds, "For
a copious account of daemons, their nature, and different orders, see
the notes on the First Alkibiades in vol. i. of my Plato, and also my
translation of Iamblichus on the Mysteries." A little further on
Apuleius says: "It is not fit that the supernal gods should