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Moreover the Nereids, and with them all the surviving pagan deities, are pictured by the peasant in corporeal form, whereas the angels—and there are bad angels, who ‘possess’ men, as well as good—are in common speech as well as in the formal dedications of churches known as οἱ ἀσώματοι, ‘the Bodiless ones.’ There is then an essential difference in the nature of these two classes of beings, which justifies the supposed distinction in their methods of working. For ‘possession’ proper is the injury inflicted, or rather infused, by spirits pure and simple; external ‘seizure’ is the work of corporeal beings. And this distinction was recognised in comparatively early times; for John of Damascus[338] in speaking of στρίγγαι, a peculiarly maleficent kind of witch (of whom more anon), notes as singular the fact that sometimes they appear clothed in bodily form and sometimes as mere spirits (μετὰ σώματος ἢ γυμνῇ τῇ ψυχῇ). It is then to the second interpretation of the phrase ἔχει ἀπ’ ἔξω, as implying external and bodily violence, that the balance of argument, I think, inclines.