Abstract
TheOdyssey does not offer the context of blood and fury that characterizes theIliad when a daimōn seizes a warrior on the battlefield, but the contexts in which it intervenes nevertheless overlap with the conclusions reached in the analysis of theIliad : the daimōn refers to an acting divine power that may or may not be identified. This is notably the case in two prayers in which the Nymphs and Zeus are respectively invoked to bring Ulysses home. In both cases, the formula is the same, and the protagonists hope " that a daimōn will bring him back "(Od., XVII, 240-243 ; XXI, 200-201).
As for the term olbiodaimōn that qualifies Agamemnon in Priam's mouth in the song III of theIliad, it refers, in parallel to that other hapax that is moirēgenēs in the same verse (181), to the divine favor that characterizes a man " prosperous " (olbos). The notion of daimōn is set against the same background as the devolution of his share(moira) to a mortal at birth. Such a determination is part of what we call an individual's " fate ", but this fate is not an indeterminate power that would blindly strike : it is the balance between good and evil, as Achilles attributes its mastery to Zeus himself in Canto XXIV of theIliad (v. 527-540).
Finally, one last Homeric issue has been considered : the apostrophe daimonie, in the masculine, or more rarely daimoniē in the feminine. From the point of view of the one who apostrophizes his interlocutor, the latter is seized, inspired, transported by something external to him and which leads him in an inappropriate, even aberrant, direction. In short : he goes beyond the expected limits of a speech or attitude. But by the time such a vocative has been used and frozen into a standardized expression, it seems to have demonetized to the point where it can be placed in the mouth of a god (Hom., Il., I, 561 ; IV, 31 ; III, 399).
