Euhemerus
Encyclopedia
Euhemerus (late 4th century BC) was a Greek mythographer
at the court of Cassander
, the king of Macedon
. Euhemerus' birthplace is disputed, with Messina in Sicily
as the most probable location, while others champion Chios
, or Tegea
.
, Plutarch
, and Polybius
, maintained that Euhemerus was a Messenian, but did not specify whether he came from the Peloponnesian or the Sicilian
Messene, which was an ancient Greek colony. Other ancient testimonies placed his birth at Chios, or Tegea
. Most modern scholars however generally agree that Euhemerus came from the Sicilian Messene (Messina). Diodorus Siculus is one of the very few sources which provides other details about Euhemerus' life. According to Diodorus, Euhemerus was a personal friend of Cassander
, king of Macedonia (c. 305 - 297 BC) and the most prominent mythographer
for the Macedonian court. Sometime in the early 3rd century BC Euhemerus wrote his main work Sacred History ("Hiera Anagraphê").
included fragments from Euhemerus’ writings in the Arabian geography of his fifth book and in the mythology of his sixth book. The sixth book of Diodorus’ Bibliotheca is lost, but Eusebius cites a fragment from it at length in his Praeparatio Evangelica. The ancient Roman writer Ennius
first translated Euhemerus' work into Latin, but this translation is also lost. Lactantius
however in the 3rd century AD included substantial references to Ennius' translation in the first book of his Divine Institutes. Various other fragments of importance also also found in the later literature of Augustine of Hippo
. From these extant fragments and references, modern scholars have been able to "compile what is presumably a fairly complete picture of Euhemerus’ work".
Euhemerus' work may have taken the form of a philosophical fictionalized travelogue, universally accepted today as a philosophical Romance
, incorporating imagined archaic inscriptions, which his literary persona claimed to have found during his travels. Euhemerus claims to have traveled to a group of islands in the waters off Arabia. One of these, Panchaea
, is home to a utopian society made up of a number of different ethnic tribes. His critique of tradition is epitomized in a register of the births and deaths of many of the gods, which his narrator persona
discovered inscribed on a golden pillar in a temple of Zeus Triphylius on the invented island of Panchaea
; he claimed to have reached the island on a voyage down the Red Sea
round the coast of Arabia, undertaken at the request of Cassander of Macedon, according to the Christian historian of the fourth century AD, Eusebius of Caesarea
. Euhemerus references a rational island utopia
. The ancient Hellenic tradition of a distant Golden Age
, of Hesiod
's depiction of human happiness before the gift of Pandora
, of the mythic convention of idealized Hyperboreans, made concrete in the legendary figure of the Scythia
n philosopher-hero Anacharsis
, or the idealized "Meropes" of Theopompus
had been recently enriched by contacts with India
. Euhemerus apparently systematized a method of interpreting the popular myth
s, which was consistent with the attempts of Hellenistic culture to explain traditional religious beliefs in terms of a rational naturalism. Euhemerus asserted that the Greek gods had been originally kings, heroes and conquerors, or benefactors to men, who had thus earned a claim to the veneration of their subjects. Zeus
for example, was according to him, a king of Crete
, who had been a great conqueror; the tomb of Zeus was shown to visitors near Knossos
, perhaps engendering or enhancing among the traditionalists the reputation of Cretans as liars.
. In more recent literature of myth, such as in Bulfinch's Mythology
, Euhemerism is called the "Historical Interpretation" of mythology. Euhemerism is defined in modern academic literature as the theory that myths are distorted accounts of real historical events. Euhemerus was not the first to attempt to rationalize mythology through history, as euhemeristic views are found in earlier writers, including Xenophanes
, Herodotus
, Hecataeus of Abdera
and Ephorus
. However Euhemerus is credited as having developed the theory in application to all myths, considering mythology to be "history in disguise". In a scene described in Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates offers a euhemeristic interpretation of a myth concerning Boreas and Orithyia:
Thus in Socrates' euhemeristic approach of the myth of Boreas abducting Orithyia, he rationalizes the story of Boreas, the northern wind, as having pushed Orithyia off the rock cliffs through the equation of Boreas with a natural gush of wind and the acceptance of Orithyia as a historical personage. However Socrates, despite holding some euhemeristic views, mocked the concept that all myths could be rationalized, noting that the mythical creatures of "absurd forms" such as Centaurs and the Chimera
could not easily be explained.
In the ancient skeptic philosophical tradition of Theodorus of Cyrene
and the Cyrenaics
, Euhemerus forged a new method of interpretation for the contemporary religious beliefs. Though his work is lost, the reputation of Euhemerus was that he believed that much of Greek mythology
could be interpreted as natural or historical events subsequently given supernatural characteristics through distortion or retelling. Subsequently Euhemerus was considered to be an atheist by his opponents, most notably Callimachus
.
. In numerous ancient cultures, kings were exalted or venerated into the status of divine beings and worshipped after their death, or sometimes even while they ruled. Dion
, the tyrant ruler of Syracuse in Sicily was deified while he was alive and modern scholars consider his apotheosis to have influenced Euhemerus' views on the origin of all Gods. Euhemerus was also living during the contemporaneous deification of the Seleucids and "pharaoization
" of the Ptolemies in a fusion of Hellenic and native Egyptian traditions.
was a mortal king who died on Crete
, and that his tomb could still be found there with the inscription bearing his name. This claim however did not originate with Euhemerus, as the general sentiment of Crete during the time of Epimenides
of Knossos
(c. 600 BC) was that Zeus was buried somewhere in Crete. For this reason, the Cretans were often considered atheists, and Epimenides called them all liars (see Epimenides paradox
). Callimachus
, an opponent of Euhemerus' views on mythology argued that Zeus' Cretan tomb was fabricated, and that he was eternal:
A later Latin scholia on the Hymns of Callimachus, attempted to account for the tomb of Zeus. According to the scholia, the original tomb inscription read: "the tomb Minos, the son of Jupiter" but overtime the words "Minos, the son" wore away only leaving "the tomb of Jupiter", which had misled the Cretans into thinking that Zeus had died and was buried there.
Influenced by Euhemerus, Porphyry
in the 3rd century AD claimed that Pythagoras
had discovered the tomb of Zeus on Crete and written on the tomb's surface an inscription reading "Here died and was buried Zan, whom they call Zeus". Varro
also wrote about the tomb of Zeus, but few accounts could agree of its precise location on Crete.
embraced euhemerism in attempt to undermine the validity of pagan Gods. The usefulness of euhemerist views to early Christian apologists may be summed up in Clement of Alexandria
's triumphant cry in Cohortatio ad gentes: "Those to whom you bow were once men like yourselves."
, a deuterocanonical book
, has a passage, , giving a euhemerist explanation of the origin of idols.
apologists
deployed the euhemerist argument to support their position that pagan mythology was merely an aggregate of fable
s of human invention. Cyprian
, a North African convert to Christianity, wrote a short essay, De idolorum vanitate (On the Vanity of Idols) in 247 AD that assumes the euhemeristic rationale as though it needed no demonstration. Cyprian begins:
Cyprian proceeds directly to examples, the apotheosis
of Melicertes
and Leucotheia; "The Castors [i.e. Dioscuri] die by turns, that they may live," a reference to the daily sharing back and forth of their immortality by the Heavenly Twins. "The cave of Jupiter is to be seen in Crete, and his sepulchre is shown," Cyprian says, confounding Zeus and Dionysus but showing that the Minoan
cave cult was still alive in Crete in the third century AD. In his exposition, it is to Cyprian's argument to marginalize the syncretism
of pagan belief, in order to emphasize the individual variety of local deities:
Eusebius in his Chronicle
employed euhemerism to argue the Babylonian God Baal
was a deified ruler and that the God Belus
, was the first Assyrian king.
Euhemeristic views are found expressed also in Tertullian
, De idololatria the Octavius of Minucius Felix and in Origen
. Arnobius
' dismissal of paganism in the fifth century, on rationalizing grounds, may have depended on a reading of Cyprian, with the details enormously expanded. Isidore of Seville
, compiler of the most influential early medieval encyclopedia, devoted a chapter "De diis gentium" to elucidating with numerous examples and elaborated genealogies of gods, the principle drawn from Lactantius
, "Quos pagani deos asserunt, homines olim fuisse produntur." ("Those whom pagans claim to be gods were once mere men.") Elaborating logically, he attempted to place these deified men in the six great periods of history as he divided it, and created mythological dynasties. Isidore's euhemeristic bent was codified in a rigid parallel with sacred history in Peter Comestor's appendix to his much translated Historia scholastica (written ca. 1160), further condensing Isidore to provide strict parallels of figures from the pagan legend
, as it was now viewed in historicised narrative, and the mighty human spirits of the patriarchs of the Old Testament. Martin of Braga
in his De correctione rusticorum wrote idolatry stemmed from post-deluge survivors of Noah's family who began to worship the Sun and Stars instead of God. In his view the Greek Gods were deified descendants of Noah who were once real historical personages.
continued to embrace Euhemerism, such as Vincent of Beauvais
, Petrus Comestor
, Roger Bacon
and Godfrey of Viterbo
.
, composed around 1220, the Christian Icelandic bard and historian Snorri Sturluson
proposes that the Norse gods were originally historical war leaders and kings. Odin
, the father of the gods, is introduced as a historical character living in present-day Turkey
, tracing his ancestry back to Priam
, the king of Troy
during the Trojan War
. As Odin travels north to settle in the Nordic countries
, he establishes the royal families ruling in Denmark
, Sweden
, and Norway
at the time.
Thus, while Snorri's euhemerism follows the early Christian tradition, the effect is not simply to discredit the divinity of the gods of a religion on the wane, but also (on the model of Virgil
's Aeneid
) to hint that the 'divinisation' was done in order to legitimize more recent Scandinavian rulers.
from the 16th century, to modern times. In 1711, the French historian Antoine Banier
in his Mythologie et la fable expliqués par l'histoire ("The mythology and fables of the ancients, explained") presented strong arguments for a euhemerist interpretation of Greek mythology. Jacob Bryant
's A New System or Analysis of Ancient Mythology (1744) was also another key work on Euhemerism of the period, but argued so from a Biblical basis. Of the early 19th century, George Stanley Faber
was another leading Biblical euhemerist. His work The Origin of Pagan Idolatry (1816) proposed that all the pagan nations worshipped the same gods, who were all deified men. Outside of Biblical influenced literature, some archaeologists embraced euhemerist views since they discovered legends or myths could verify archaeological findings. Heinrich Schliemann
was a prominent archaeologist of the 19th century who argued myths had embedded historical truths. Schliemann was an advocate of the historical reality of places and characters mentioned in the works of Homer
and claimed to have discovered artefacts of Greek mythological figures (see Mask of Agamemnon
).
Herbert Spencer
embraced some euhemeristic arguments in attempt to explain the anthropocentric origin of religion, through ancestor worship. Rationalizing methods of interpretation that treat some myths as traditional accounts based upon actual historical events are a continuous feature of some modern readings of mythology. The twentieth century poet and mythographer Robert Graves
offered many such "euhemerist" interpretations in his telling of The White Goddess
(1948) and The Greek Myths
(1955). His suggestions that such myths record and justify the political and religious overthrow of earlier cult systems have been received with at least some skepticism.
Mythography
A mythographer, or a mythologist is a compiler of myths. The word derives from the Greek "μυθογραφία" , "writing of fables", from "μῦθος" , "speech, word, fact, story, narrative" + "γράφω" , "to write, to inscribe". Mythography is then the rendering of myths in the arts...
at the court of Cassander
Cassander
Cassander , King of Macedonia , was a son of Antipater, and founder of the Antipatrid dynasty...
, the king of Macedon
Macedon
Macedonia or Macedon was an ancient kingdom, centered in the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula, bordered by Epirus to the west, Paeonia to the north, the region of Thrace to the east and Thessaly to the south....
. Euhemerus' birthplace is disputed, with Messina in Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
as the most probable location, while others champion Chios
Chios
Chios is the fifth largest of the Greek islands, situated in the Aegean Sea, seven kilometres off the Asia Minor coast. The island is separated from Turkey by the Chios Strait. The island is noted for its strong merchant shipping community, its unique mastic gum and its medieval villages...
, or Tegea
Tegea
Tegea was a settlement in ancient Greece, and it is also a former municipality in Arcadia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Tripoli, of which it is a municipal unit. Its seat was the village Stadio....
.
Life
Little is known about Euhemerus's life, and his birthplace is disputed. Classical writers such as Diodorus SiculusDiodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who flourished between 60 and 30 BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily . With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work, Bibliotheca...
, Plutarch
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
, and Polybius
Polybius
Polybius , Greek ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his work, The Histories, which covered the period of 220–146 BC in detail. The work describes in part the rise of the Roman Republic and its gradual domination over Greece...
, maintained that Euhemerus was a Messenian, but did not specify whether he came from the Peloponnesian or the Sicilian
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
Messene, which was an ancient Greek colony. Other ancient testimonies placed his birth at Chios, or Tegea
Tegea
Tegea was a settlement in ancient Greece, and it is also a former municipality in Arcadia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Tripoli, of which it is a municipal unit. Its seat was the village Stadio....
. Most modern scholars however generally agree that Euhemerus came from the Sicilian Messene (Messina). Diodorus Siculus is one of the very few sources which provides other details about Euhemerus' life. According to Diodorus, Euhemerus was a personal friend of Cassander
Cassander
Cassander , King of Macedonia , was a son of Antipater, and founder of the Antipatrid dynasty...
, king of Macedonia (c. 305 - 297 BC) and the most prominent mythographer
Mythography
A mythographer, or a mythologist is a compiler of myths. The word derives from the Greek "μυθογραφία" , "writing of fables", from "μῦθος" , "speech, word, fact, story, narrative" + "γράφω" , "to write, to inscribe". Mythography is then the rendering of myths in the arts...
for the Macedonian court. Sometime in the early 3rd century BC Euhemerus wrote his main work Sacred History ("Hiera Anagraphê").
Euhemerus' Sacred History
Only quoted fragments, remain from Euhemerus' main work, a Sacred History. Diodorus SiculusDiodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who flourished between 60 and 30 BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily . With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work, Bibliotheca...
included fragments from Euhemerus’ writings in the Arabian geography of his fifth book and in the mythology of his sixth book. The sixth book of Diodorus’ Bibliotheca is lost, but Eusebius cites a fragment from it at length in his Praeparatio Evangelica. The ancient Roman writer Ennius
Ennius
Quintus Ennius was a writer during the period of the Roman Republic, and is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was of Calabrian descent...
first translated Euhemerus' work into Latin, but this translation is also lost. Lactantius
Lactantius
Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius was an early Christian author who became an advisor to the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine I, guiding his religious policy as it developed, and tutor to his son.-Biography:...
however in the 3rd century AD included substantial references to Ennius' translation in the first book of his Divine Institutes. Various other fragments of importance also also found in the later literature of Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...
. From these extant fragments and references, modern scholars have been able to "compile what is presumably a fairly complete picture of Euhemerus’ work".
Euhemerus' work may have taken the form of a philosophical fictionalized travelogue, universally accepted today as a philosophical Romance
Romance (genre)
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
, incorporating imagined archaic inscriptions, which his literary persona claimed to have found during his travels. Euhemerus claims to have traveled to a group of islands in the waters off Arabia. One of these, Panchaea
Panchaea
Panchaea is a fictional island, first mentioned by ancient Greek philosopher Euhemerus in the late 4th century BC. Euhemerus describes the island and his trip there in his major work Sacred History, only fragments of which survive....
, is home to a utopian society made up of a number of different ethnic tribes. His critique of tradition is epitomized in a register of the births and deaths of many of the gods, which his narrator persona
Persona
A persona, in the word's everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. The word is derived from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask. The Latin word probably derived from the Etruscan word "phersu", with the same meaning, and that from the Greek πρόσωπον...
discovered inscribed on a golden pillar in a temple of Zeus Triphylius on the invented island of Panchaea
Panchaea
Panchaea is a fictional island, first mentioned by ancient Greek philosopher Euhemerus in the late 4th century BC. Euhemerus describes the island and his trip there in his major work Sacred History, only fragments of which survive....
; he claimed to have reached the island on a voyage down the Red Sea
Red Sea
The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez...
round the coast of Arabia, undertaken at the request of Cassander of Macedon, according to the Christian historian of the fourth century AD, Eusebius of Caesarea
Eusebius of Caesarea
Eusebius of Caesarea also called Eusebius Pamphili, was a Roman historian, exegete and Christian polemicist. He became the Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine about the year 314. Together with Pamphilus, he was a scholar of the Biblical canon...
. Euhemerus references a rational island utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
. The ancient Hellenic tradition of a distant Golden Age
Golden Age
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend and refers to the first in a sequence of four or five Ages of Man, in which the Golden Age is first, followed in sequence, by the Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, and then the present, a period of decline...
, of Hesiod
Hesiod
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...
's depiction of human happiness before the gift of Pandora
Pandora
In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman. As Hesiod related it, each god helped create her by giving her unique gifts...
, of the mythic convention of idealized Hyperboreans, made concrete in the legendary figure of the Scythia
Scythia
In antiquity, Scythian or Scyths were terms used by the Greeks to refer to certain Iranian groups of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who dwelt on the Pontic-Caspian steppe...
n philosopher-hero Anacharsis
Anacharsis
Anacharsis was a Scythian philosopher who travelled from his homeland on the northern shores of the Black Sea to Athens in the early 6th century BCE and made a great impression as a forthright, outspoken "barbarian", apparently a forerunner of the Cynics, though none of his works have...
, or the idealized "Meropes" of Theopompus
Theopompus
Theopompus was a Greek historian and rhetorician- Biography :Theopompus was born on Chios. In early youth he seems to have spent some time at Athens, along with his father, who had been exiled on account of his Laconian sympathies...
had been recently enriched by contacts with India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. Euhemerus apparently systematized a method of interpreting the popular myth
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
s, which was consistent with the attempts of Hellenistic culture to explain traditional religious beliefs in terms of a rational naturalism. Euhemerus asserted that the Greek gods had been originally kings, heroes and conquerors, or benefactors to men, who had thus earned a claim to the veneration of their subjects. Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
for example, was according to him, a king of Crete
Crete
Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...
, who had been a great conqueror; the tomb of Zeus was shown to visitors near Knossos
Knossos
Knossos , also known as Labyrinth, or Knossos Palace, is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and probably the ceremonial and political centre of the Minoan civilization and culture. The palace appears as a maze of workrooms, living spaces, and store rooms close to a central square...
, perhaps engendering or enhancing among the traditionalists the reputation of Cretans as liars.
Euhemerism
Euhemerus has become known chiefly for a rationalizing method of interpretation, known as "Euhemerism", which treats mythological accounts as a reflection of historical events, or mythological characters as historical personages but which were shaped, exaggerated or altered by retelling and traditional moresMores
Mores, in sociology, are any given society's particular norms, virtues, or values. The word mores is a plurale tantum term borrowed from Latin, which has been used in the English language since the 1890s....
. In more recent literature of myth, such as in Bulfinch's Mythology
Bulfinch's Mythology
Bulfinch's Mythology is a collection of the works of Thomas Bulfinch, named after him and published after his death. Bulfinch originally published his work as three volumes: The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes, published in 1855; The Age of Chivalry, or Legends of King Arthur, published...
, Euhemerism is called the "Historical Interpretation" of mythology. Euhemerism is defined in modern academic literature as the theory that myths are distorted accounts of real historical events. Euhemerus was not the first to attempt to rationalize mythology through history, as euhemeristic views are found in earlier writers, including Xenophanes
Xenophanes
of Colophon was a Greek philosopher, theologian, poet, and social and religious critic. Xenophanes life was one of travel, having left Ionia at the age of 25 he continued to travel throughout the Greek world for another 67 years. Some scholars say he lived in exile in Siciliy...
, Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
, Hecataeus of Abdera
Hecataeus of Abdera
Hecataeus of Abdera was a Greek historian and sceptic philosopher who flourished in the 4th century BC.-Biography:Diogenes Laertius relates that he was a student of Pyrrho, along with Eurylochus, Timon the Phliasian, Nausiphanes of Teos and others, and includes him among the "Pyrrhoneans"...
and Ephorus
Ephorus
Ephorus or Ephoros , of Cyme in Aeolia, in Asia Minor, was an ancient Greek historian. Information on his biography is limited; he was the father of Demophilus, who followed in his footsteps as a historian, and to Plutarch's claim that Ephorus declined Alexander the Great's offer to join him on his...
. However Euhemerus is credited as having developed the theory in application to all myths, considering mythology to be "history in disguise". In a scene described in Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates offers a euhemeristic interpretation of a myth concerning Boreas and Orithyia:
Thus in Socrates' euhemeristic approach of the myth of Boreas abducting Orithyia, he rationalizes the story of Boreas, the northern wind, as having pushed Orithyia off the rock cliffs through the equation of Boreas with a natural gush of wind and the acceptance of Orithyia as a historical personage. However Socrates, despite holding some euhemeristic views, mocked the concept that all myths could be rationalized, noting that the mythical creatures of "absurd forms" such as Centaurs and the Chimera
Chimera (mythology)
The Chimera or Chimaera was, according to Greek mythology, a monstrous fire-breathing female creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of multiple animals: upon the body of a lioness with a tail that ended in a snake's head, the head of a goat arose on her back at the center of her...
could not easily be explained.
In the ancient skeptic philosophical tradition of Theodorus of Cyrene
Theodorus the Atheist
Theodorus the Atheist, of Cyrene, was a philosopher of the Cyrenaic school. He lived in both Greece and Alexandria, before ending his days in his native city of Cyrene. As a Cyrenaic philosopher, he taught that the goal of life was to obtain joy and avoid grief, and that the former resulted from...
and the Cyrenaics
Cyrenaics
The Cyrenaics were an ultra-hedonist Greek school of philosophy founded in the 4th century BC, supposedly by Aristippus of Cyrene, although many of the principles of the school are believed to have been formalized by his grandson of the same name, Aristippus the Younger. The school was so called...
, Euhemerus forged a new method of interpretation for the contemporary religious beliefs. Though his work is lost, the reputation of Euhemerus was that he believed that much of Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
could be interpreted as natural or historical events subsequently given supernatural characteristics through distortion or retelling. Subsequently Euhemerus was considered to be an atheist by his opponents, most notably Callimachus
Callimachus
Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...
.
Deification
Euhemerus' views were rooted in the deification of men, usually kings, into Gods through apotheosisApotheosis
Apotheosis is the glorification of a subject to divine level. The term has meanings in theology, where it refers to a belief, and in art, where it refers to a genre.In theology, the term apotheosis refers to the idea that an individual has been raised to godlike stature...
. In numerous ancient cultures, kings were exalted or venerated into the status of divine beings and worshipped after their death, or sometimes even while they ruled. Dion
Dion of Syracuse
Dion , tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily, was the son of Hipparinus, and brother-in-law of Dionysius I of Syracuse.-Family:Dion was the son of the Syracusan statesman Hipparinus, who had assisted the despot Dionysius I, in the Syracusan army. Hipparinus' other children were Megacles and Aristomache...
, the tyrant ruler of Syracuse in Sicily was deified while he was alive and modern scholars consider his apotheosis to have influenced Euhemerus' views on the origin of all Gods. Euhemerus was also living during the contemporaneous deification of the Seleucids and "pharaoization
Pharaoh
Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. The title originates in the term "pr-aa" which means "great house" and describes the royal palace...
" of the Ptolemies in a fusion of Hellenic and native Egyptian traditions.
Tomb of Zeus
Euhemerus argued that ZeusZeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
was a mortal king who died on Crete
Crete
Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...
, and that his tomb could still be found there with the inscription bearing his name. This claim however did not originate with Euhemerus, as the general sentiment of Crete during the time of Epimenides
Epimenides
Epimenides of Knossos was a semi-mythical 6th century BC Greek seer and philosopher-poet. While tending his father's sheep, he is said to have fallen asleep for fifty-seven years in a Cretan cave sacred to Zeus, after which he reportedly awoke with the gift of prophecy...
of Knossos
Knossos
Knossos , also known as Labyrinth, or Knossos Palace, is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and probably the ceremonial and political centre of the Minoan civilization and culture. The palace appears as a maze of workrooms, living spaces, and store rooms close to a central square...
(c. 600 BC) was that Zeus was buried somewhere in Crete. For this reason, the Cretans were often considered atheists, and Epimenides called them all liars (see Epimenides paradox
Epimenides paradox
The Epimenides paradox is a problem in logic. It is named after the Cretan philosopher Epimenides of Knossos , There is no single statement of the problem; a typical variation is given in the book Gödel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter:...
). Callimachus
Callimachus
Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...
, an opponent of Euhemerus' views on mythology argued that Zeus' Cretan tomb was fabricated, and that he was eternal:
A later Latin scholia on the Hymns of Callimachus, attempted to account for the tomb of Zeus. According to the scholia, the original tomb inscription read: "the tomb Minos, the son of Jupiter" but overtime the words "Minos, the son" wore away only leaving "the tomb of Jupiter", which had misled the Cretans into thinking that Zeus had died and was buried there.
Influenced by Euhemerus, Porphyry
Porphyry (philosopher)
Porphyry of Tyre , Porphyrios, AD 234–c. 305) was a Neoplatonic philosopher who was born in Tyre. He edited and published the Enneads, the only collection of the work of his teacher Plotinus. He also wrote many works himself on a wide variety of topics...
in the 3rd century AD claimed that Pythagoras
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him...
had discovered the tomb of Zeus on Crete and written on the tomb's surface an inscription reading "Here died and was buried Zan, whom they call Zeus". Varro
Varro
Varro was a Roman cognomen carried by:*Marcus Terentius Varro, sometimes known as Varro Reatinus, the scholar*Publius Terentius Varro or Varro Atacinus, the poet*Gaius Terentius Varro, the consul defeated at the battle of Cannae...
also wrote about the tomb of Zeus, but few accounts could agree of its precise location on Crete.
Euhemerism and Christians
Hostile to paganism, the early Christians, such as the Church FathersChurch Fathers
The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were early and influential theologians, eminent Christian teachers and great bishops. Their scholarly works were used as a precedent for centuries to come...
embraced euhemerism in attempt to undermine the validity of pagan Gods. The usefulness of euhemerist views to early Christian apologists may be summed up in Clement of Alexandria
Clement of Alexandria
Titus Flavius Clemens , known as Clement of Alexandria , was a Christian theologian and the head of the noted Catechetical School of Alexandria. Clement is best remembered as the teacher of Origen...
's triumphant cry in Cohortatio ad gentes: "Those to whom you bow were once men like yourselves."
The Book of Wisdom
The Book of WisdomBook of Wisdom
The Book of Wisdom, often referred to simply as Wisdom or the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, is one of the deuterocanonical books of the Bible. It is one of the seven Sapiential or wisdom books of the Septuagint Old Testament, which includes Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon ,...
, a deuterocanonical book
Deuterocanonical books
Deuterocanonical books is a term used since the sixteenth century in the Catholic Church and Eastern Christianity to describe certain books and passages of the Christian Old Testament that are not part of the Hebrew Bible. The term is used in contrast to the protocanonical books, which are...
, has a passage, , giving a euhemerist explanation of the origin of idols.
Early Christian apologists
The early ChristianEarly Christianity
Early Christianity is generally considered as Christianity before 325. The New Testament's Book of Acts and Epistle to the Galatians records that the first Christian community was centered in Jerusalem and its leaders included James, Peter and John....
apologists
Christian apologetics
Christian apologetics is a field of Christian theology that aims to present a rational basis for the Christian faith, defend the faith against objections, and expose the perceived flaws of other world views...
deployed the euhemerist argument to support their position that pagan mythology was merely an aggregate of fable
Fable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
s of human invention. Cyprian
Cyprian
Cyprian was bishop of Carthage and an important Early Christian writer, many of whose Latin works are extant. He was born around the beginning of the 3rd century in North Africa, perhaps at Carthage, where he received a classical education...
, a North African convert to Christianity, wrote a short essay, De idolorum vanitate (On the Vanity of Idols) in 247 AD that assumes the euhemeristic rationale as though it needed no demonstration. Cyprian begins:
Cyprian proceeds directly to examples, the apotheosis
Apotheosis
Apotheosis is the glorification of a subject to divine level. The term has meanings in theology, where it refers to a belief, and in art, where it refers to a genre.In theology, the term apotheosis refers to the idea that an individual has been raised to godlike stature...
of Melicertes
Melicertes
In Greek mythology, Melicertes is the son of the Boeotian prince Athamas and Ino, daughter of Cadmus....
and Leucotheia; "The Castors [i.e. Dioscuri] die by turns, that they may live," a reference to the daily sharing back and forth of their immortality by the Heavenly Twins. "The cave of Jupiter is to be seen in Crete, and his sepulchre is shown," Cyprian says, confounding Zeus and Dionysus but showing that the Minoan
Minoan civilization
The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that arose on the island of Crete and flourished from approximately the 27th century BC to the 15th century BC. It was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of the British archaeologist Arthur Evans...
cave cult was still alive in Crete in the third century AD. In his exposition, it is to Cyprian's argument to marginalize the syncretism
Syncretism
Syncretism is the combining of different beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. The term means "combining", but see below for the origin of the word...
of pagan belief, in order to emphasize the individual variety of local deities:
Eusebius in his Chronicle
Chronicon (Eusebius)
The Chronicon or Chronicle was a work in two books by Eusebius of Caesarea. It seems to have been compiled in the early 4th century. It contained a world chronicle from Abraham until the vicennalia of Constantine I in 325 AD...
employed euhemerism to argue the Babylonian God Baal
Baal
Baʿal is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant and Asia Minor, cognate to Akkadian Bēlu...
was a deified ruler and that the God Belus
Belus (Assyrian)
Belus or Belos in classical Greek or classical Latin texts in an Assyrian context refers to one or another purportedly ancient and historically nonexistent Assyrian king, such king in part at least a euhemerization of the Babylonian god Bel Marduk.Belus most commonly appears as the father of...
, was the first Assyrian king.
Euhemeristic views are found expressed also in Tertullian
Tertullian
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, anglicised as Tertullian , was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He is the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He also was a notable early Christian apologist and...
, De idololatria the Octavius of Minucius Felix and in Origen
Origen
Origen , or Origen Adamantius, 184/5–253/4, was an early Christian Alexandrian scholar and theologian, and one of the most distinguished writers of the early Church. As early as the fourth century, his orthodoxy was suspect, in part because he believed in the pre-existence of souls...
. Arnobius
Arnobius
Arnobius of Sicca was an Early Christian apologist, during the reign of Diocletian . According to Jerome's Chronicle, Arnobius, before his conversion, was a distinguished Numidian rhetorician at Sicca Veneria , a major Christian center in Proconsular Africa, and owed his conversion to a...
' dismissal of paganism in the fifth century, on rationalizing grounds, may have depended on a reading of Cyprian, with the details enormously expanded. Isidore of Seville
Isidore of Seville
Saint Isidore of Seville served as Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and is considered, as the historian Montalembert put it in an oft-quoted phrase, "le dernier savant du monde ancien"...
, compiler of the most influential early medieval encyclopedia, devoted a chapter "De diis gentium" to elucidating with numerous examples and elaborated genealogies of gods, the principle drawn from Lactantius
Lactantius
Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius was an early Christian author who became an advisor to the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine I, guiding his religious policy as it developed, and tutor to his son.-Biography:...
, "Quos pagani deos asserunt, homines olim fuisse produntur." ("Those whom pagans claim to be gods were once mere men.") Elaborating logically, he attempted to place these deified men in the six great periods of history as he divided it, and created mythological dynasties. Isidore's euhemeristic bent was codified in a rigid parallel with sacred history in Peter Comestor's appendix to his much translated Historia scholastica (written ca. 1160), further condensing Isidore to provide strict parallels of figures from the pagan legend
Legend
A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...
, as it was now viewed in historicised narrative, and the mighty human spirits of the patriarchs of the Old Testament. Martin of Braga
Martin of Braga
Saint Martin of Braga was an archbishop of Bracara Augusta in Hispania , a monastic founder, and an ecclesiastical author...
in his De correctione rusticorum wrote idolatry stemmed from post-deluge survivors of Noah's family who began to worship the Sun and Stars instead of God. In his view the Greek Gods were deified descendants of Noah who were once real historical personages.
Middle Ages
Christian writers during the Middle AgesMiddle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
continued to embrace Euhemerism, such as Vincent of Beauvais
Vincent of Beauvais
The Dominican friar Vincent of Beauvais wrote the Speculum Maius, the main encyclopedia that was used in the Middle Ages.-Early life:...
, Petrus Comestor
Petrus Comestor
-Biography:Born in Troyes, he was first attached to the Church of Notre-Dame in that city and habitually signed himself as "Presbyter Trecensis". Before 1148 he became dean of the chapter and received a benefice in 1148. About 1160 he formed one of the Chapter of Notre-Dame at Paris, and about the...
, Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon, O.F.M. , also known as Doctor Mirabilis , was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empirical methods...
and Godfrey of Viterbo
Godfrey of Viterbo
Godfrey of Viterbo was a Roman Catholic chronicler, either Italian or German.-Biography:He was probably an Italian by birth, although some authorities assert that he was a Saxon German like his imperial patrons...
.
Snorri Sturluson's "euhemerism"
In the Prose EddaProse Edda
The Prose Edda, also known as the Younger Edda, Snorri's Edda or simply Edda, is an Icelandic collection of four sections interspersed with excerpts from earlier skaldic and Eddic poetry containing tales from Nordic mythology...
, composed around 1220, the Christian Icelandic bard and historian Snorri Sturluson
Snorri Sturluson
Snorri Sturluson was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was twice elected lawspeaker at the Icelandic parliament, the Althing...
proposes that the Norse gods were originally historical war leaders and kings. Odin
Odin
Odin is a major god in Norse mythology and the ruler of Asgard. Homologous with the Anglo-Saxon "Wōden" and the Old High German "Wotan", the name is descended from Proto-Germanic "*Wodanaz" or "*Wōđanaz"....
, the father of the gods, is introduced as a historical character living in present-day Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, tracing his ancestry back to Priam
Priam
Priam was the king of Troy during the Trojan War and youngest son of Laomedon. Modern scholars derive his name from the Luwian compound Priimuua, which means "exceptionally courageous".- Marriage and issue :...
, the king of Troy
Troy
Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...
during the Trojan War
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...
. As Odin travels north to settle in the Nordic countries
Nordic countries
The Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic which consists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland...
, he establishes the royal families ruling in Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, and Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
at the time.
Thus, while Snorri's euhemerism follows the early Christian tradition, the effect is not simply to discredit the divinity of the gods of a religion on the wane, but also (on the model of Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
's Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
) to hint that the 'divinisation' was done in order to legitimize more recent Scandinavian rulers.
Euhemerism in the modern world
Euhemeristic interpretations of mythology continued throughout the Early modern periodEarly modern period
In history, the early modern period of modern history follows the late Middle Ages. Although the chronological limits of the period are open to debate, the timeframe spans the period after the late portion of the Middle Ages through the beginning of the Age of Revolutions...
from the 16th century, to modern times. In 1711, the French historian Antoine Banier
Antoine Banier
The abbé Antoine Banier , a French clergyman and member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres from 1713, was a historian and translator, whose rationalizing interpretation of Greek mythology was widely accepted until the mid-nineteenth century.Banier, born at Dallet in Auvergne and...
in his Mythologie et la fable expliqués par l'histoire ("The mythology and fables of the ancients, explained") presented strong arguments for a euhemerist interpretation of Greek mythology. Jacob Bryant
Jacob Bryant
Jacob Bryant was a British scholar and mythographer, who has been described as "the outstanding figure among the mythagogues who flourished in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries".-Life:...
's A New System or Analysis of Ancient Mythology (1744) was also another key work on Euhemerism of the period, but argued so from a Biblical basis. Of the early 19th century, George Stanley Faber
George Stanley Faber
George Stanley Faber was an Anglican theologian and prolific author....
was another leading Biblical euhemerist. His work The Origin of Pagan Idolatry (1816) proposed that all the pagan nations worshipped the same gods, who were all deified men. Outside of Biblical influenced literature, some archaeologists embraced euhemerist views since they discovered legends or myths could verify archaeological findings. Heinrich Schliemann
Heinrich Schliemann
Heinrich Schliemann was a German businessman and amateur archaeologist, and an advocate of the historical reality of places mentioned in the works of Homer. Schliemann was an archaeological excavator of Troy, along with the Mycenaean sites Mycenae and Tiryns...
was a prominent archaeologist of the 19th century who argued myths had embedded historical truths. Schliemann was an advocate of the historical reality of places and characters mentioned in the works of Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
and claimed to have discovered artefacts of Greek mythological figures (see Mask of Agamemnon
Mask of Agamemnon
The Mask of Agamemnon is an artifact discovered at Mycenae in 1876 by Heinrich Schliemann. The artifact is a funeral mask hewn in gold, and was found over the face of a body located in a burial shaft...
).
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
embraced some euhemeristic arguments in attempt to explain the anthropocentric origin of religion, through ancestor worship. Rationalizing methods of interpretation that treat some myths as traditional accounts based upon actual historical events are a continuous feature of some modern readings of mythology. The twentieth century poet and mythographer Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
offered many such "euhemerist" interpretations in his telling of The White Goddess
The White Goddess
The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth is a book-length essay on the nature of poetic myth-making by author and poet Robert Graves. First published in 1948, based on earlier articles published in Wales magazine, corrected, revised and enlarged editions appeared in 1948, 1952 and 1961...
(1948) and The Greek Myths
The Greek Myths
The Greek Myths is a mythography, a compendium of Greek mythology, by the poet and writer Robert Graves, normally published in two volumes....
(1955). His suggestions that such myths record and justify the political and religious overthrow of earlier cult systems have been received with at least some skepticism.
See also
- PalaephatusPalaephatusPalaephatus was the original author of a rationalizing text on Greek mythology, the work of paradoxography On Incredible Tales , which survives in a Byzantine edition....
- ProdicusProdicusProdicus of Ceos was a Greek philosopher, and part of the first generation of Sophists. He came to Athens as ambassador from Ceos, and became known as a speaker and a teacher. Plato treats him with greater respect than the other sophists, and in several of the Platonic dialogues Socrates appears...
of Ceos - Leon of PellaLeon of PellaLeon of Pella or Leo the Egyptian was a historian, priest and theologian. He wrote the book On the Gods in Egypt , based on an apocryphal letter of Alexander the Great to his mother Olympias...
- Mythological kings of Sweden
- List of legendary kings of Britain
- Mythological Anglo-Saxon kings
External links
- Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities 1898: Euhemerus
- Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911: Euhemerus
- Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol V: Cyprian, "On the Vanity of Idols" e-text
- The Ancient Library