Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

Stoics on souls and demons: Reconstructing Stoic demonology 383
had anything like this in mind. Indeed, it is not easy to make sense, in
Stoic terms, of the idea of god actively sending out demons whose evil
nature we may presume to involve precisely their unwillingness to follow
the divine logos.
All in all, one is tempted to conclude that Chrysippus at most introduced
the workings of bad demons – however they should be interpreted
– as a possible explanation of some forms of evil. In the absence of
further independent evidence we have no way of gauging to what extent
he was really committed to this view. 67 For Plutarch such considerations
do not matter. He introduces the quotation in a polemical context
which may well be misleading on two accounts: first, in so far as it
assumes that we are dealing with Chrysippus’ positive views and, secondly,
in so far as it interprets the quotation as implying that the
Stoic god actively uses bad demons as his servants.
Yet, the idea which Plutarch detected behind the quotation from
Chrysippus’ On Substance, viz. the conception of evil demons acting in
the service of god, recurs elsewhere in his work, in the Roman Questions,
this time ascribed, albeit rather in passing, to ‘the school of Chrysippus’.
As I indicated earlier, it is a passage which Max Pohlenz took to represent
the core of Stoic demonology: 68
Why is a dog placed beside the Lares that men call by the special name of
praestites, and why are the Lares themselves clad in dog-skins? Is it because
… Or is the truth rather, as some Romans affirm, that, just as the philosophic
school of Chrysippus thinks that evil spirits stalk about whom the
gods use as executioners and avengers upon unholy and unjust men, even so the
demons make the relations of gods and men remote and alien by doing away
with the ‘interpretative and ministering nature’ as Plato has called it
[R. 260d; Smp. 202e]”. On the Platonic conception of demons as intermediaries
or messengers, see also Philo, Gig.12;Somn. I, 134 –135; 141 – 142; Apuleius,
De deo Socr. 154. The notion that also bad demons can act as intruments or
messengers of god also occurs in Philo, Gig. 17 – 18; Quaest. in Ex. I, 23.
67 Elsewhere – in a fragment from his Physical Questions in Plutarch, St. rep. 1047c
(SVF II, 763) – Chrysippus can be seen to have advocated caution in matters
where the evidence does not allow us to make certain claims. Perhaps his mentioning
of various possible solutions may count as an instance of the required
caution. Anyway, there is no reason to assume that in so intricate a theological
matter as the theodicy Chrysippus had only ready-made answers available. Long
& Sedley 1987, 332 label both the husk example and the explanation through
evil demons as “casual suggestions, probably never wholeheartedly incorporated
into Stoic theology, with which they are scarcely compatible”.
68 Pohlenz 1947, I, 96, quoted above, 365, n. 18.