CHAPTER V.

THE DEMONOLOGY OF GHOSTS, SPRITES AND BOGEYS.

Primitive demonology constantly in flux. Various connotations of the word Ker. The Ker as evil sprite, the Ker as bacillus of disease. The Keres of Old Age and Death. The Ker as Harpy and Wind-Daimon. The Ker as Fate in Homer and Hesiod. The Ker as Gorgon. Origin of the Gorgoneion. Apotropaic masks. The Gorgon developed from the Gorgoneion. The Graiae. The Evil Eye. The Ker as Siren. The Sirens of Homer. Problem of the bird-form in art. The Siren as midday daimon. The Siren on funeral monuments. The bird-form of the soul in Greece and Egypt. Plato’s Sirens. The Ker as Sphinx. Mantic aspect of Sphinx. The Sphinx as Man-slaying Ker, as Funeral Monument. The Ker as Erinys. The Erinyes as angry Keres. Erinys an adjectival epithet. The Erinyes primarily the ghosts of slain men crying for vengeance. The Erinyes developed by Homer and Herakleitos into abstract ministers of vengeance. The Erinyes of Aeschylus more primitive than the Erinyes of Homer. The blood-curse in the _Choephoroi_. The Erinyes of the stage. The Erinyes analogous to Gorgons and Harpies, but not identical. The wingless Erinyes of Aeschylus. The winged Erinyes of later art. The Poinae. The Erinys as snake. The _Semnai Theai_. New cult at Athens. New underworld ritual. The transformation of Erinyes into Semnai Theai. The Eumenides at Colonos, at Megalopolis, at Argos, pp. 163-256.