ove what Jamblichus informs us concerning apparitions
of the gods, genii, good and bad angels, heroes, and the archontes who
preside over the government of the world.

Homer, the most ancient of Greek writers, and the most celebrated
theologian of Paganism, relates several apparitions both of gods and
heroes, and also of the dead. In the Odyssey,[77] he represents
Ulysses going to consult the sorcerer Tiresias; and this diviner
having prepared a grave or trench full of blood to evoke the manes,
Ulysses draws his sword to prevent them from coming to drink this
blood, for which they thirst; but which they were not allowed to taste
before they had answered the questions put to them. They believed also
that the souls of the dead could not rest, and that they wandered
around their dead bodies so long as the corpse remained uninhumed.

Even after they were interred, food was offered them; above everything
honey was given, as if leaving their tomb they came to taste what was
offered them.[78] They were persuaded that the demons loved the smoke
of sacrifices, melody, the blood of victims, and intercourse with
women; that they were attached for a time to certain spots and certain
edifices which they infested. They believed that souls separated from
the gross and terrestrial body, preserved after death one more subtile
and elastic, having the form of that they had quitted; that these
bodies were luminous, and like the stars; that they retained an
inclination for those things which they had loved during their life on
earth, and that often they appeared gliding around their tombs.

To bring back all this to the matter here treated of, that is to say,
to the appearance of good angels, we may note, that in the same manner
that we attach to the apparitions of good angels the idea of tutelary
spirits of kingdoms, provinces, and nations, and of each of us in
particular--as, for instance, the Prince of the kingdom of Persia, or
the angel of that nation, who resisted the archangel Gabriel during
twenty-one days, as we read in Daniel;[79] the angel of Macedonia, who
appeared to St. Paul,[80] and of whom we have spoken before; the
archangel St. Michael, who is considered as the chief of the people of
God and the armies of Israel;[81] and the guardian angels deputed by
God to guide us and guard us all the days of our life--so we may say
that the Greeks and Romans, being Gentiles, believed that certain
sorts of spirits, which they imagined