But apart altogether from the philosophic use of Dæmonology, there are evidences that the belief in Dæmons was held in some sort of loose combination with the popular polytheistic faith. The Hesiodic poems were a compendium of early Hellenic theology,[238] and Hesiod, according to Plutarch himself, was the first to indicate with clearness and distinctness the existence of four species of rational beings—gods, _dæmons_, heroes, and men.[239] In the passage of Hesiod referred to (_Works and Days_, 109 sqq.) two kinds of Dæmons are described. The dwellers in the Golden Age are transformed, after their sleep-like death on earth, into Terrestrial Dæmons:— “When earth’s dark breast had closed this race around, Great Jove as demons raised them from the ground; _Earth-hovering spirits_, they their charge began, The ministers of good, and guards of man. Mantled with mist of darkling air they glide, And compass earth and pass on every side; And mark, with earnest vigilance of eyes, Where just deeds live, or crookèd wrongs arise.”[240] They are virtuous, holy beings, endowed with immortality—“Jove’s immortal guardians over mortal men.”[241] The races of the Silver Age become Subterranean powers, blessed beings, but inferior in honour to the former class, and distinctly described as mortal.[242] Hesiod says nothing about Evil Dæmons, although the disappearance of the Brazen Race furnished an opportunity for their introduction into his scheme of supernatural beings. But once the existence of beings inferior to the gods in the celestial hierarchy obtained a recognition in popular tradition, however vague the recognition might be, the conception would tend to gather strength and definiteness from the necessity, first expressed by the philosophers, but doubtless widely spread among the people, of safeguarding the sanctity of the gods, while at the same time recognizing the substantial validity of tradition. This tendency would be also probably aided by the fact that in Homer, as Plutarch points out, and in the dramatists and prose writers generally, as is well known, the designations of “gods” and “dæmons” were mutually interchanged.[243] Plutarch, at all events, who boldly uses the Dæmons to perform such functions, and to bear the blame for such actions, as were inappropriate to the divine character, is enabled to make one of his _dramatis personæ_—Cleombrotus, the traveller, who was specially devoted to the study of such matters—assert that “it can be demonstrated by unexceptionable testimony from antiquity that there do exist beings of a nature intermediate between that of God and man, beings subject to mortal passions and liable to inevitable changes, but whom we must, _in accordance with the established custom of our fathers_, regard and invoke as Dæmons, giving them all due reverence.”[244] It is natural, therefore, in the light of these indications, to believe that, side by