Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

Stoics on souls and demons: Reconstructing Stoic demonology 373
Stoics’ to the names ‘Thales, Pythagoras and Plato’, for the doxa that demons
are psychic entities and that heroes are human souls separated from
bodies, their good or bad character depending on the kind of soul they
have been: “Thales, Pythagoras, Plato and the Stoics hold that demons
are psychic entities; and that souls separated from the body are heroes –
good souls becoming good heroes, bad souls bad.” 43 We find a partial
parallel in a passage from the general account of Stoicism in Diogenes
Laertius. Here demons are said to experience sympatheia with regard
to humans and to act as overseers of human affairs. Heroes are now
said to be the souls of good people only: “They say that there is also
a class of demons that experience sympathy with humans, and that
keep watch over human affairs; and that the surviving souls of good
people are heroes.” 44
Two observations may serve to connect these two fragments with
the material discussed earlier. First, it is in these texts that we explicitly
find the distinction between surviving souls, called hÞroes, and demons
proper. However, in view of the fact that, as we saw, Sextus claimed
that surviving souls become ‘identical with demons’, the conclusion
seems warranted that they are ‘of the same stuff’ as demons sensu proprio,
so that we are not dealing with two unrelated species. It rather appears
that hÞroes, i.e. surviving human souls, could be conceived as a subspecies
of the class of demons sensu lato.
Secondly, the fact that according to Aëtius’ account demons and hÞroes
can be either good or bad, whereas the account in Diogenes Laertius
recognizes only good hÞroes, may reflect, albeit in a slightly distorted
way, the disagreement between Cleanthes and Chrysippus (referred to
above) on the survival of human souls. Chrysippus’ view that only
good souls survive for a considerable time, i. e. until the next conflagration,
may have led to the doxographical simplification (in Diogenes or his
source) that there are really only good hÞroes (which of course may
have been the traditional view as well).
A further piece of evidence on non-human external demons which
deserves some consideration is provided by Plutarch’s De Iside, where
43 Aëtius I, 8, 2 (SVF II, 1101): Hak/r Puhac|qar Pk\tym oR Styzjo· da_lomar
rp\qweim oqs_ar xuwij\r eWmai d³ ja· Fqyar t±r jewyqisl]mar xuw±r t_m
syl\tym7 ja· !caho»r l³mt±r!cah\r, jajo»r d³t±rva}kar.
44 D.L. VII, 151 (SVF II, 1102): Vas· d’ eWmai ja_ timar da_lomar !mhq~pym sulp\heiam
5womtar, 1p|ptar t_m !mhqype_ym pqacl\tym ja· Fqyar t±r rpokekeill]mar
t_m spohda_ym xuw\r.