threatened to persecute Aeneas:
Omnibus umbra locis adero: dabis improbe poenas.
My angry ghost arising from the deep,
Shall haunt thee waking, and disturb thy sleep;
At least my shade thy punishment shall know,
And Fame shall spread the pleasing news below.
They are (as others suppose) appointed by those higher powers to keep
men from their nativity, and to protect or punish them as they see
cause: and are called boni et mali Genii by the Romans. Heroes, lares,
if good, lemures or larvae if bad, by the stoics, governors of
countries, men, cities, saith [1124]Apuleius, Deos appellant qui ex
hominum numero juste ac prudenter vitae curriculo gubernato, pro
numine, postea ab hominibus praediti fanis et ceremoniis vulgo
admittuntur, ut in Aegypto Osyris, &c. Praestites, Capella calls them,
which protected particular men as well as princes, Socrates had his
Daemonium Saturninum et ignium, which of all spirits is best, ad
sublimes cogitationes animum erigentem, as the Platonists supposed;
Plotinus his, and we Christians our assisting angel, as Andreas
Victorellus, a copious writer of this subject, Lodovicus de La-Cerda,
the Jesuit, in his voluminous tract de Angelo Custode, Zanchius, and
some divines think. But this absurd tenet of Tyreus, Proclus confutes
at large in his book de Anima et daemone.
Psellus [1125], a Christian, and sometimes tutor (saith Cuspinian) to
Michael Parapinatius, Emperor of Greece, a great observer of the nature
of devils, holds they are corporeal [1126], and have aerial bodies,
that they are mortal, live and die, (which Martianus Capella likewise
maintains, but our Christian philosophers explode) that they [1127]are
nourished and have excrements, they feel pain if they be hurt (which
Cardan confirms, and Scaliger justly laughs him to scorn for; Si
pascantur aere, cur non pugnant ob puriorem aera? &c.) or stroken: and
if their bodies be cut, with admirable celerity they come together
again. Austin, in Gen. lib. iii. lib. arbit., approves as much, mutata
casu corpora in deteriorem qualitatem aeris spissioris, so doth
Hierome. Comment. in epist. ad Ephes. cap. 3, Origen, Tertullian,
Lactantius, and many ancient Fathers of the Church: that in their fall
their bodies were changed into a more aerial and gross substance.
Bodine, lib. 4, Theatri Naturae and David Crusius, Hermeticae
Philosophiae, lib. 1. cap. 4, by several arguments proves angels and
spirits to be corporeal: quicquid continetur in loco corporeum est; At
spiritus continetur in loco, ergo. [1128]Si spiritus sunt quanti, erunt
corporei: At sunt quanti, ergo. sunt finiti, ergo. quanti, &c. Bodine
[1129]goes farther yet, and will have these, Animae separatae genii,
spirits, angels, devils, and so likewise souls of men departed, if
corporeal (which he most eagerly contends) to be of some shape, and
that absolutely round, like Sun and Moon, because that is the most
perfect form, quae nihil habet asperitatis, nihil angulis incisum,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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