Deity · Greek · c. 700 BCE
Daimon — the sources' own term: Greek daimōn
The Daimones
Also called Daemon, Daimon · also recorded as Daimonai, Daimones, Daemones (per Wikidata)
Guardian spirits — Socrates had one that advised him — whose name the Greek scriptures borrowed for evil spirits, permanently poisoning the word.
Deep source base
In Hesiod the *daimones* are the spirits of the golden race, 'guardians of mortal men', wholly benign. Plato's Socrates describes a personal daimonion that warns him away from error. When Jewish translators working in Greek needed a word for the spirits behind foreign gods, they took *daimonion* — and the New Testament followed. Every English use of 'demon' descends from that translation decision, which is why the word carries a judgment its original had no trace of.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
No temples. A libation of unmixed wine to the Agathos Daimon was poured at the end of a meal, which is domestic practice rather than cult.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- The Iliad · c. 750 BCE
- Named there as
- daimōn
- Rank
- Class of Spirits
- Pantheon
- Greek
- Order
- Greek
- Base of operations
- No temples. A libation of unmixed wine to the Agathos Daimon was poured at the end of a meal, which is domestic practice rather than cult.
- Era
- c. 700 BCE
- Traditions
- Greek
- Placed in
- The Greek Succession
Traits
- Domain
- Guardianship, individual fate, the intermediate realm
Stats
Known connections
Identified with
2 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 2 offices attributed to The Daimones, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- martial1
- knowledge1
martial
knowledge
- Bears Messagesno text cited
1 mark
Which marks is it attached to?
A mark a figure carries and a mark used against a figure are opposite claims, so each link says which it is.
4 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 4 texts that names The Daimones, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
4 texts spanning roughly 1,170 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as daimōn, Daimones, daimonion (KJV 'devils'), daemones
- Rank: given as Guardians of mortal men; Unclean spirit
The word doing its original work, and the reason this entry exists: in Homer a daimōn is a god, or the divine acting anonymously — the power that moves a man when no name is attached to it. There is nothing evil in it. Set against the New Testament attestation on the same entry, the corpus can show the whole semantic collapse in two citations.
The golden race, become good spirits who watch over judgments and deeds.
“They are called pure spirits dwelling on the earth, and are kindly.”
The Greek keeps Hesiod's word while reversing its sense; English versions render it 'devils', so the continuity is invisible in translation.
The hinge. Augustine grants the Platonists their definition — beings of air, immortal in body and passionate in mind, placed between gods and men — and then denies that any of them is good, arguing that the passions the definition concedes are already the disqualification. He notes that pagans distinguish good daemones from bad and that Christian usage does not, and he is right about the usage because he is largely the reason for it. The corpus's other two attestations on this entry are Hesiod's kindly guardians and the New Testament's unclean spirits; this is the argument that connects them.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention The Daimones?
Is The Daimones the same as Angels?
What rank is The Daimones?
How else is The Daimones spelled?
What is The Daimones said to do?
How old is The Daimones?
Nearest in the corpus
If The Daimones is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Artemis
Mistress of Animals · Greek
Huntress and protector of the young, whose Ephesian cult statue looks nothing like her and whose temple gave the ancient world one of its most durable protective formulas.
Hades
Lord of the Underworld · Greek
Ruler of the dead by lot rather than by punishment — a god of the underworld who is not evil, a distinction Christian cosmology cannot express.
Hecate
Goddess of Crossroads · Greek
Hesiod has Zeus honour her above all others. By the medieval period she presides over witchcraft instead, a demotion with no wrongdoing attached to it anywhere.
Apollo
God of Prophecy · Greek
Oracle-giver at Delphi, and the god who both sends plague and lifts it. Later traditions split that duality between an angel and a demon; Greece kept it in one figure.
Ares
God of War · Greek
War as slaughter rather than strategy — disliked by the Greeks who worshipped him, and rehabilitated entirely by the Romans as Mars.
Athena
Goddess of Wisdom and War · Greek
Born from the head of Zeus, and the only Olympian to hold both war and craft. Where Ares is violence, she is strategy.
The books behind The Daimones
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
Theogony & Works and Days
Hesiod · c. 700 BCE · Ancient Greek
Read Theogony & Works and Days in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Hesiod · Wikimedia file page
New Testament
Various · c. 50–110 CE · Koine Greek
Read New Testament in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Wikimedia file page
The City of God
Augustine of Hippo; tr. Marcus Dods · 413–426 CE · Latin
Read The City of God in full ↗
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.