Miscellanies 6.3.31

Some say, then, that plagues, hailstorms, gales, and the like tend to happen not only from the disorder of matter but also through the anger of certain daemons, or even of angels who are not good. For instance, they say that the magi at Cleonae, watching the sky for clouds about to hail, turn aside the threatened wrath by incantations and sacrifices; and indeed, if ever they lack an animal, they are content to offer blood from their own finger as the sacrifice. And Diotima of Mantinea, when the Athenians had sacrificed before the plague, brought about a ten-year postponement of the disease, just as the sacrifices of Epimenides the Cretan put off the Persian war for the same Athenians for the same length of time. They think it makes no difference whether we call these souls gods or angels. For instance, those experienced in this teaching, when founding temples, set up the tombs of the departed in many of them, indeed in almost all, calling their souls daemons and teaching that they are to be worshiped by men, as having received authority, through the purity of their life and by divine providence, to go about the region around the earth for the service of men; for they knew that some souls are held fast by nature in the body.