Consider, if you will, a word. It could be any word, big or small, well used or rarely heard. However, it must be a word to which you apply significant meaning. In my case, the word I chose was “demon”. When I began to research the subject of demons with reference to the Ancient Greek world I discovered a rather irksome situation. Many of the texts which I looked into to see what they had to say on the subjects of demons were problematic, in that too often the translated version shied away from the term “demon”, likely to avoid the association that word has due to the Judeo-Christian context with which a large majority of people read. However, despite this irritating hindrance, eventually, I came to a source which was clear, one which, by dint of being functionally a discussion “περὶ ὀνομάτων ὀρθότητος” (About the Accuracy of Names), was forced to state things without such obfuscatory language as Hesiod’s “they are called pure spirits dwelling on the earth”. This source that actually sets things out plainly, in a slight departure from his usual style, is Plato’s “Cratylus”.
In “Cratylus” the subject of demons comes up only for one exchange, when Socrates and the men questioning him are discussing the order in which they should deal with topics going forwards in the text, and Hermogenes asks that it must make logical sense that, following Gods, they should discuss Demons. In his typical style, Socrates immediately launches into a discussion of demons, prompted, as he was, by a question. Socrates first makes reference to Hesiod’s mention of demons as the sprits of the golden race of men, and here the translator, Benjamin Jowett, does not shy away from translating the Greek “δαίμονες” as “demon”. As the translations of Hesiod which I have read previously have all translated that δαίμονες with any applicable word except “demon”, the reference to Hesiod made by Plato in “Cratylus” directed me to a Greek version of “Works and Days”, where, sure enough, the word which had been translated as “pure spirits” was revealed to be “δαίμονες”.