In discussing the Persian worship of the king's daimon in J.H.S., 1927, p. 54, I cited the following passage from Isocrates's Panegyricus (151): θνητὸνμὲν ἄνδρα προσκυνοῦντες καὶ δαίμονα προσαγορεύοντες By an error, the origin of which I am at a loss to understand, I inserted the article τόν before δαίμονα and accordingly misinterpreted the words. The meaning is, of course, ‘paying obeisance to mortal man and calling him daimon.’ The passage cannot, therefore, be cited as evidence for the cult of the personal daimon of the Persian king.

The significance of the evidence provided by the quotations from Theopompus and from the Artaxerxes of Plutarch is not affected by the fact that the words of Isocrates do not apply to the same cult. There is indeed another reference to the subject in Plutarch, this time in the life of Themistocles, which I have chanced to find recently. In the description of Themistocles's reception at the Persian court (chap. xxix), the chiliarch is represented as saying in wrath to Themistocles: ὄφις ῾´Ελλην ὁ ποικίλος ὁ βασιλέως σε δαίμων δεῦροἤγαηεν The story is, of course, of dubious historical value, but it is evident that in some one of the numerous sources which he cites in this part of the Themistocles, Plutarch found expression of the Persian belief in the idea of the king's daimon.