The daimōn and distribution

The famous passage in Herodotus' book II (53), where he claims that the poets have " fabricated for the gods a genealogy, given them their nicknames, distributed among them honors and skills, and signified their figures " is preceded by a fanciful etymology of the word theos. The gods are so called (theoi), according to the historian, because, " having put all things in order (thentes), they preside over all distributions " (II, 52). This emic vision of the gods makes them appear as dispensing, distributing and regulating authorities. However, the etymology of daimōn, which is not at all fanciful, makes it a dispensing, distributing agent ^[1]. The resonance between Herodotus' conception of the gods' action in the world and the etymology of daimōn invites us to explore this semantic furrow along three axes. The first relates to the distribution of goods and evils inherent in the gods' hold over the human condition. Also linked to this is the idea of " fate " and " destiny ". The second axis has to do with the distribution of divine power itself in a polytheistic system where the gods are numerous and associated with specific honors and skills : the daimōn is a notion that makes it possible to " crystallize " these particular skills by identifying them with a name. The third axis concerns the spatial distribution of the gods. In the general economy of the world as evoked by archaic poems, not all gods are located in the same place, and this more or less specific location expresses a facet of their respective timē. From this perspective, daimones become " epichthonian " gods, located on earth, among men, as perceived in Hesiod and Euripides. It is their topical nature that explains why Plato(Republic, IV, 327b ; Laws, VII, 801e) classifies the superhuman entities to be honored in his ideal city into three groups   : gods -  daimones  - heroes, i.e. the " Olympian " deities - or even Panhellenic -, local deities and heroes.

Reference

[1] Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, Paris, 1968, s.v. δαίμων. Cf. Georges Dumézil, Les Dieux souverains des Indo-Européens, Paris, 1977, p. 109.