Abstract
The tragic material of the daimōn survey is certainly abundant. The identification of various semantic orientations of the term makes it possible to order and analyze it.
The first is that of the synonymy between theos and daimōn, well attested in the Archaic period, both in the plural and singular. Some occurrences that fall under such an alternation, however, seem to go beyond it by adding the " marked " aspect of a divine action in the world, as in the case of Dionysus described as " daimōn manifeste " in Euripides' Bacchae (v. 22 : ἐμφανὴς δαίμων ; cf. 42).
The second semantic orientation concerns the " crystallization " of a divine action that takes on a consistency of its own, in both the good and the evil attributed to humans(e.g. Eur., Hecuba, 162-164 ; Medea, 1389-1392). The " cosmique " situation of the superhuman entity thus designated also seems to play a part in the choice of the word : the gods on Olympus can be placed opposite Epichthonian daimones, " sur la terre "(e.g. Eur., Electra, 1233-1237).
The third path moves the daimōn from conjunctural divine action, which can sometimes be translated as " le sort ", to a structural situation where actions follow one another in a sequence that can then be referred to as " destin "(e.g. Eur., Alceste, 496-506 ; Médée, 1346).
The fourth orientation is closely linked to the previous one, and concerns what can briefly be called " the family daimōn ". It refers to the recurrence, from generation to generation in the same lineage, of happiness or misfortune, the tragic material rather giving right to the negative daimōn, for example in the family of the Atreides or that of the Labdacides(e.g. Esch., Sept, 812-813 ; Agamemnon, 1475-1476).
Finally, in the fifth and last instance, the name daimōn is attributed to the deceased, such as Darius in Aeschylus' Persians (v. 620-621, 634), Alcestis in Euripides' eponymous play (1003), or Rhésos described asanthrōpodaimōn (" man-daimōn ") in pseudo-Euripides' eponymous play (971). In the latter case, the context of Rhésos' post-mortem existence invites us to compare thehapax anthrōpodaimōn with the daimōn dios that Phaethon becomes at the end of the Theogony.
