How, then, does Plutarch reconcile this lofty conception of a Deity who is Unity, Eternity, and Supreme Intelligence, with the multitude of individual deities which form so essential a part of the “hereditary Faith” of Græco-Roman civilization, and which are universally admitted as displaying qualities discrepant from even a far lower notion of God than that which Plutarch actually maintained? Further, since the Empire includes other nationalities than the Greeks, and the Roman Pantheon is not the exclusive habitation of native-born deities, how shall he find a place in his theological scheme for the gods of other peoples, so that there may be that Catholic Unity in faith which shall correspond to the one political dominion under which the world dwells in so great a peace and concord? The difficulty of reconciling Polytheism with philosophic Monotheism was, of course, not new. In earlier days it had been necessary for philosophers to secure their monotheistic speculations from the charge of Atheism by finding in their systems a dignified position for the popular gods. And even those philosophers who sincerely believed in the existence of beings corresponding to the popular conceptions felt the need of accounting, in some more or less specious way, for the ill deeds that were traditionally attributed to so many of them. The ancient doctrine of Dæmons, emanating from some obscure source in Antiquity,[233] had been adopted by the Pythagoreans in the latter sense,[234] while Plato, who believed in none of these things, had, on one or two occasions, by the use of philosophic “myth” replete with more than Socratic irony, described these beings as playing a part between God and man which might be tolerantly regarded as not greatly dissimilar from that popularly assigned to the lesser deities of the Hellenic Olympus.[235] In the “Statesman,” the creation-myth, to which the Stranger invites the younger Socrates to give his entire attention, “like a child to a story,” describes how the Deity himself tended men and was their protector, while Dæmons had a share, after the manner of shepherds, in the superintendence of animals according to genera and herds.[236] Another story which Socrates, in the “Banquet,” says that he heard from Diotima, that wonderful person who postponed the Athenian plague for ten years, tells how Eros is a great Dæmon; how Dæmons are intermediate between gods and mortals; how the race of Dæmons interpret and transmit to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and interpret and transmit to men the answers and commands of the gods.[237] For God, we are told, is not directly associated with man; but it is through the mediation of the Dæmons, who are many and various, that all communion and converse take place between the human and the Divine.