[124\5: The Tritopatores are most distinctly referred to as ~a/nemoi~: Demon ap. Phot. Suid. ~tritop.~ cf. ~despo/tai ane/môn~ Phot. ~tritopa/tôr~; Tz. Lyc. 738. Orphic poetry made them ~thurôrou\s kai\ phu/lakas tô=n ane/môn~. This is already a free interpretation; the Attic belief, expressed by Demon, knows nothing about this. It can only have been learned invention that limited their number to three (as in the case of the originally unlimited number of Horai, Erinyes, etc.), and gave them definite names (Amalkeides, etc., Orph. _fr._ 240, Ab.) or identified them with the three Hekatoncheires (Kleidemos in the ~Exêg.~). The genuine and ancient belief about them can still be discerned through all the confusion of misinterpretation and misunderstanding, and according to this the ~tritopa/tores~ were the souls of ancestors who were also wind-spirits. People prayed for children to these spirits: and Lobeck, _Agl._ 755 ff., is right in connecting with this custom the Orphic doctrine that the soul of man comes into him from without with the wind. Even this, however, is only a speculative embellishment of the popular belief about the Tritopatores (which the Orphics cannot, as Welcker thinks, _Götterl._ iii, 71, have "invented": they only explained it after their fashion and consequently must have found it already existing). When we have stripped off all speculative accretions we find the Tritopatores to have been the souls of ancestors who have become wind-spirits and travel in the wind like other ~psuchai/~ (whose name even is derived from the breath of the wind). From these as from real ~pnoiai\ zô|ogo/noi~ their descendants hope for aid where the entry into life of a new ~psuchê/~ is concerned. It is not hard to understand the connexion between souls and wind-spirits; it is merely that such conceptions were rare among the Greeks and for that reason these isolated wind-spirits surviving in popular belief were turned into individual daimones--the Tritopatores no less than the Harpies (see _Rh. Mus._ 50, 3 ff.).] [125\5: The words of Orestes in A., _Ch._ 483, give very naive expression to the belief. He calls to the soul of his father: ~hou/tô~ (if thou sendest me aid) ~ga\r a/n soi dai=tes e/nnomoi brotô=n ktizoi/at'; ei de\ mê/, par' eudei/pnois e/sei a/timos empu/roisi knisôtoi=s chthono/s~. Thus we see that the belief ridiculed by Luc., _Luct._ 9, was true of earlier times as well: ~tre/phontai de\ a/ra~ (the dead) ~tai=s par' hêmi=n choai=s kai\ toi=s kathagizome/nois epi\ tô=n ta/phôn; hôs ei/ tô| mê\ ei/ê kataleleimme/nos hupe\r gê=s phi/los ê\ suggenê/s, a/sitos hou=tos nekro\s kai\ limô/ttôn en autoi=s politeu/etai~.]