Res Gestae

After that he admitted to his more intimate attendants that, as though forsaken, he ceased to see a kind of secret something[*](aliquid suggests quidam eximia magnitudine et forma in Suet., Jul. 22, but is much more vague—hardly more than a feeling of the presence of some supernatural power.) which he used to think occasionally appeared to him, though somewhat dimly; and it was supposed that a sort of guardian spirit, assigned to protect his life, had deserted him, since he was destined quickly to leave this world.

For the theologians maintain that there are associated with all men at their birth, but without interference with the established course of destiny, certain divinities of that sort, as directors of their conduct; but they have been seen by only a very few, whom their manifold merits have raised to eminence.

And this oracles and writers of distinction have shown; among the latter is also the comic poet Menander, in whom we read these two senarii:

1. A daemon is assigned to every man
2. At birth, to be the leader[*](μυσταγωγός is the name applied to the priest who gave the initiated instruction in the mysteries. Later it was used of the guide who showed strangers the noteworthy objects in a place. The quotation is frag. 550 in Kock’s Comicorum Att. Frag. III.) of his life.