Thus the Keres, from being merely bad influences inherent and almost automatic, became exalted and personified into actual magicians. Eustathius in the passage where he quotes Stesichorus allows us to see how this happened. He is commenting on the ancient tribe of the Kouretes: these Kouretes, he says, were Cretan and also called Thelgines (_sic_), and they were sorcerers and magicians. ‘Of these there were two sorts: one sort craftsmen and skilled in handiwork, the other sort pernicious to all good things; these last were of fierce nature and were fabled to be the origins of squalls of wind, and they had a cup in which they used to brew magic potions from roots. They (i.e. the former sort) invented statuary and discovered metals, and they were amphibious and of strange varieties of shape, some were like demons, some like men, some like fishes, some like serpents; and the story went that some had no hands, some no feet, and some had webs between their fingers like geese. And they say that they were blue-eyed and black-tailed.’ Finally comes the significant statement that _they perished struck down by the thunder of Zeus or by the arrows of Apollo_. The old order is slain by the new. To the imagination of the conqueror the conquered are at once barbarians and magicians, monstrous and magical, hated and feared, craftsmen and medicine men, demons, beings endowed like the spirits they worship, in a word Keres-Telchines[442]. When we find the good, fruitful, beneficent side of the Keres effaced and ignored we must always remember this fact that we see them through the medium of a conquering civilization[443]. THE KERES OF OLD AGE AND DEATH. By fair means or foul, by such ritual procedures as have already been noted, by the chewing of buckthorn, the sounding of brass, the making of comic figures, most of the Keres could be kept at bay; but there were two who waited relentless, who might not be averted, and these were Old Age and Death. It is the thought that these two Keres are waiting that with the lyric poets most of all overshadows the brightness of life. Theognis[444] prays to Zeus: ‘Keep far the evil Keres, me defend From Old Age wasting, and from Death the end.’ These haunting Keres of disease, disaster, old age and death Mimnermus[445] can never forget: ‘We blossom like the leaves that come in spring, What time the sun begins to flame and glow, And in the brief span of youth’s gladdening Nor good nor evil from the gods we know, But always at the goal black Keres stand Holding, one grievous Age, one Death within her hand.