The demons differ from the gods in that they are mortal, though much longer-lived than men. Hesiod said that crows live nine times as long as men, stags four times as long as crows, ravens three times as long as stags, a phoenix nine times as long as a raven, and the nymphs ten times as long as the phoenix.[940] There are storms in the isles off Britain whenever one of the demons residing there dies.[941] Some demons are good spirits and others are evil; some are more passive and irrational than others; some delight in gloomy festivals, foul words, and even human sacrifice.[942] [Sidenote: Men and demons.] Once a year in the neighborhood of the Red Sea a man is seen who spends the remainder of his time among “nymphs, nomads and demons.”[943] At his annual appearance many princes and great men come to consult him concerning the future. He also has the gift of tongues to the extent of understanding several languages perfectly. His speech is like sweetest music, his breath sweet and fragrant, his person the most graceful that his interlocutor had ever seen. He also was never afflicted with any disease, for once a month he ate the bitter fruit of a medicinal herb. As to the exact nature of Socrates’ demon there is some diversity of opinion. One man suggests that it was merely the sneezing of himself or others, sneezes on the left hand warning him to desist from his intended course of action, while a sneeze in any other quarter was interpreted by him as a favorable sign.[944] The weight of opinion, however, inclines towards the view that his demon did not appear to him as an apparition or phantasm, or even communicate with him as an audible voice, but by immediate impression upon his mind.[945] [Sidenote: Relation of Plutarch’s to other conceptions of demons.] Plutarch’s account of demons is the first of a number which we shall have occasion to note. As the discussion of them by Apuleius in the next chapter and the rather crude representation of them given in Philostratus’s _Life of Apollonius of Tyana_ will show, there was as yet among non-Christian writers no unanimity of opinion concerning demons. On the other hand there are several conceptions in Plutarch’s essays which were to be continued later by Christians and Neo-Platonists: namely, the conception of a mediate class of beings between God and men, the hypothesis of a world of spirits in close touch with human life, the association of divination and oracles with demons, and the location of spirits in the sphere of the moon or the air between earth and moon,—although Plutarch sometimes connected demons with the stars above the moon. This occasional association of stars with spirits and of sinning souls with falling stars bears some resemblance to the depiction of certain stars as sinners in the Hebraic _Book of Enoch_, which was written before Plutarch’s time and which we shall consider in our next book as an influence upon the development of early Christian thought.