On black-figured vase-paintings little winged figures occur not unfrequently to which it is by no means easy to give a name. In fig. 26 we have such a representation[469]—Europa seated on the bull passes in rapid flight over the sea which is indicated by fishes and dolphins. In front of her flies a vulture-like bird, behind comes a winged figure holding two wreaths. Is she Nike, bringing good success to the lover? is she a favouring wind speeding the flight? I incline to think the vase-painter did not clearly discriminate. She is a sort of good Ker, a fostering favouring influence. In all these cases of early genii it is important to bear in mind that the sharp distinction between moral and physical influence, so natural to the modern mind, is not yet established. [Illustration: FIG. 26.] We return to the Keres from which the wind demons sprang. THE KER AS FATE. One Homeric instance of the use of Ker remains to be examined. When Achilles[470] had the fourth time chased Hector round the walls of Troy, Zeus was wearied and ‘Hung up his golden scales and in them set Twain Keres, fates of death that lays men low.’ This weighing of Keres, this ‘Kerostasia,’ is a weighing of death fates, but it is interesting to find that it reappears under another name, i.e. the ‘Psychostasia,’ the weighing of souls. We know from Plutarch[471] that Aeschylus wrote a play with this title. The subject was the weighing of the souls or lives not of Hector and Achilles, but Achilles and Memnon. This is certain because, Plutarch says, he placed at either side of the scales the mothers Thetis and Eos praying for their sons. Pollux[472] adds that Zeus and his attendants were suspended from a crane. In the scene of the Kerostasia as given by Quintus Smyrnaeus[473], a scene which probably goes back to the earlier tradition of ‘Arctinos,’ it is noticeable that Memnon the loser has a swarthy Ker while Achilles the winner has a bright cheerful one, a fact which seems to anticipate the white and black Erinyes. The scene of the Psychostasia or Kerostasia, as it is variously called, appears on several vase-paintings, one of which from the British Museum[474] is reproduced in fig. 27. Hermes holds the scales, in either scale is the Ker or _eidolon_ of one of the combatants; the lekythos is black-figured, and is our earliest source for the Kerostasia. The Keres or ψυχαί are represented as miniature men, it is the _lives_ rather than the fates that are weighed. So the notion shifts. [Illustration: FIG. 27.] In Hesiod, as has already been noted (p. 169), the Keres are more primitive and actual, they are in a sense fates, but they are also little winged spirits. But Hesiod is Homer-ridden, so we get the ‘black Ker,’ own sister to Thanatos and hateful Moros (Doom) and Sleep and the tribes of Dreams[475]. We get also[476] the dawnings of an Erinys, of an _avenging_ fate, though the lines look like an interpolation: