Note 477 — Chapter V · THE DEMONOLOGY OF GHOSTS AND SPRITES AND BOGEYS.

Hes. Erg. 416. The only other passage in which this difficult word occurs is in one of the oracles collected in the συναγωγή of Mnaseas (3rd cent. B.C.) and preserved for us by the scholiast on the Phoenissae of Euripides (ad v. 638, Müller F.H.G. 3, p. 157) where Kadmos is told to go on ‘till he comes to the herds of the Ker-nourished Pelagon’ (κηριτρεφέος Πελάγοντος). Here it looks as if the epithet indicated prosperity, the man nourished and favoured and cherished by the Keres, see Roscher, Lexicon s.v. Kadmos, p. 834, and s.v. Keres, p. 1139, but it is possible that, as suggested to me by Mr Cornford, the word may have been coined by Hesiod in bitter parody of the Homeric Διοτρεφής. The notion of the evil wasting action of Keres comes out in the word κηραίνω, as in Eur. Hipp. 223 τί ποτ’, ὦ τέκνον, τάδε κηραίνεις, and more physically in Aesch. Supp. 999 θῆρες δὲ κηραίνουσι.