26
Then again, Hesiod calls the worthy and good demigods holy deities and guardians of mortals Hesiod, Works and Days, 123 and 253. Cf. Moralia, 431 e, infra. and Givers of wealth, and having therein a reward that is kingly. Works and Days, 126, repeated in 417 b, infra. Plato Symposium, 202 e. Cf. also Moralia, 415 a and 416 c-f, infra, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiq. i. 77. calls this class of beings an interpretative and ministering class, midway between gods and men, in that they convey thither the prayers and petitions of men, and thence they bring hither the oracles and the gifts of good things.
26
EmpedoclesPart of a longer passage from Empedocles; Cf. H. Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, i. p. 267, Empedocles, no. 115, 9-12. Cf. also Moralia, 830 f. says also that the demigods must pay the penalty for the sins that they commit and the duties that they neglect: Might of the Heavens chases them forth to the realm of the Ocean; Ocean spews them out on the soil of the Earth, and Earth drives them Straight to the rays of the tireless Sun, who consigns them to Heaven’s Whirlings; thus one from another receives them, but ever with loathing; until, when they have thus been chastened and purified, they recover the place and position to which they belong in accord with Nature.