In the last two chapters we have examined in some detail two great festivals of the Greeks, the spring Dithyramb, which according to Aristotle gave birth to the drama, and the Olympic Games celebrated every fifth year at or after the summer solstice. We have seen that the primary gist of both these festivals was the promotion of fertility and that each of them alike gave birth to a daimon of fertility who took on various names and shapes. The Dithyramb gave birth to the Greatest Kouros whose matured form in Crete was that of Father Zeus, but elsewhere he crystallized as Kouros into the figure of Dionysos. At Olympia, starting again from the Kouretes the daimon of fertility took various heroic shapes as Oinomaos, as Pelops, and finally again bequeathed something of his nature and functions to the Olympic Zeus himself.

We have by this time a fairly clear notion of one element in the nature of a daimon. We have seen him to be the product, the projection, the representation of collective emotion. Normally and naturally he is attended by the group or thiasos that begets him, but gradually he attains independent personality. We have also seen that in primitive communities this collective emotion focuses around and includes food interests and especially food-animals and fruit-trees.