But besides the three great Fates we must recognise also in modern Greece the existence of lesser Fates, attached each to a single human life. This is a slight extension of the main belief, and consists really in the personification of the objective fate which the three great Fates decree. Just as each man is believed to have his good guardian-angel and, by antithesis but with less biblical warranty, his bad angel, so too he is accompanied by his own personal Fate. But these lesser Fates are only faint replicas of the great trinity, and I doubt whether they are believed to have any independent power of their own; they would seem to be mere ministers who carry out the original decrees of the three supreme Fates. Often in the popular songs it is impossible to tell whether it is the lesser personal Fate or one of the great trio who is addressed. For in such lines as, Παρακαλῶ σε, Μοῖρα μου, νὰ μή με ξενιτέψῃς, Κι’ ἂν λάχῃ καὶ ξενιτευτῶ, θάνατο μή μου δώσῃς[292], ‘I pray thee, good Fate, send me not to a strange land, but if it be my lot to be sent, let me not die there,’ the form of address Μοῖρα μου (literally ‘my Fate’) implies no personal possession, but is the same as that employed in praying to God or the Virgin, Θεέ μου, Παναγία μου. But in definite forms of incantation, composed for recitation along with propitiatory offerings, the great Fates and the lesser Fate of the individual suppliant are coupled in a way which shows the difference in importance between them. The former are called ‘the Fates over all Fates’ (ἡ Μοίραις τῶν Μοιρῶν), as in the plain prose formulary quoted above; the latter is merely the Fate of this or that person. Whether these inferior Fates were known also in the classical period is a question which I am unable to answer; but that the belief in them is certainly of no recent growth is proved by an incantation more elaborate than those given above and on internal evidence very old:-- ’π’ τὸν Ὄλυμπον, τὸν κόλυμβον, τὰ τρία ἄκρα τοὐρανοῦ, ὁποῦ ᾑ Μοίραις τῶν Μοιρῶν καὶ ἡ ’δική μου Μοῖρα, ἂς ἀκούσῃ καὶ ἂς ἔλθῃ[293]. ‘From Olympus, even from the summit, from the three heights of heaven, where dwell the Fates of all Fates and my own Fate, may she hearken and come.’