Like all other cults, the cult of the dead had more to do with the relations of the daimon to the living than with his nature and essence considered abstractly, and in itself: a dogmatic account of this nature was neither offered nor required by his worship. Still, the cult was founded upon a general {171} conception, merely evading more exact definition, of the nature of the departed spirit. Men sacrificed to the souls of the dead, as to the gods[116\5] and Heroes, because they regarded them as invisible Powers,[117\5] a special class of "Blessed Ones", as the dead were beginning to be called even in the fifth century. They attempted to propitiate them,[118\5] or at least to avert their easily awakened displeasure.[119\5] Their help was also sought in all times of need; but most especially, like the chthonic gods into whose realm they have entered, they can prosper the fruits of the earth[120\5] and lend assistance at the entry of a new soul into life. For this reason libation is made to the souls of ancestors at a marriage.[121\5] The Tritopatores also, who were invoked at wedding celebrations in Attica that the marriage might prove fruitful,[122\5] were nothing else than the souls of the ancestors.[123\5] We know them also to have been referred to as wind-spirits,[124\5] and in this there appears, plainly or obscurely, an isolated fragment of the most ancient belief of the people: the departed spirits of the dead become spirits of the air; the ghosts that travel on the winds are the liberated souls of the dead. § 4