Euhemerus (Ευήμερος) (working late 4th century BCE) was a Greek mythographer at the court of Cassander, the king of Macedonia. Euhemerus' birthplace is disputed, with Messina in Sicily or Messene in the Peloponnese as the most probable locations, while others champion Chios, or Tegea. (5th century BC - 4th century BC - 3rd century BC - other centuries) (2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium AD) Events Invasion of the Celts into Ireland Kingdom of Macedon conquers Persian empire Romans build first aqueduct Chinese use bellows The Scythians are beginning to be absorbed into the Sarmatian... The bust of Zeus found at Otricoli (Sala Rotonda, Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican) Greek mythology is the body of stories belonging to the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world and their own cult and ritual practices. ... Cassander (c. ... Messina, Italy Strait of Messina, Italy. ... Sicily (Sicilia in Italian and Sicilian) is an autonomous region of Italy and the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, with an area of 25,708 km² (9,926 sq. ... Messene (Greek: Μεσσήνη Messínî or Messénê ) was an ancient Greek city, the capital of Messenia (until the modern prefecture was created). ... Chios (Greek: , alternative transliterations Khios and Hios, see also List of traditional Greek place names; Ottoman Turkish: صاقيز Sakız; Genoese: Scio) is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea five miles off the Turkish coasts. ... There is also an ancient Tegea near Kissamos in the island of Crete, see Tegea, Crete Tegea was an important religious center of ancient Greek containing the Temple of Athena Alea. ...

He is chiefly known for a rationalizing method of interpretation, known as Euhemerism, that treats mythological accounts as a reflection of actual historical events shaped by retelling and traditional mores. In the skeptic philosophical tradition of Theodorus of Cyrene and the Cyrenaics, Euhemerism forged a new method of interpretation for the contemporary religious beliefs. The reputation of Euhemerus was that he believed that much of Greek mythology could be interpreted as natural events subsequently given supernatural characteristics. Living at court in the generation following the superhuman feats of Alexander the Great and Alexander's subsequent deification, with the contemporaneous "pharaoization" of the Ptolemies in a fusion of Hellenic and native Egyptian traditions, Euhemerus was trained in the rational philosophizing current of Hellenistic culture; the two strains meet in his materialist rationalizing of Greek myth. "Euhemerus may be credited as the writer who systematized and explained an ancient and widely accepted popular belief, namely that the dividing line between gods and men is not always clear," S. Spyridakis, among others, has observed.^[1] Skepticism (Commonwealth spelling: Scepticism) can mean: Philosophical skepticism - a philosophical position in which people choose to critically examine whether the knowledge and perceptions that they have are actually true, and whether or not one can ever be said to have absolutely true knowledge; or Scientific skepticism - a scientific, or practical... Theodorus of Cyrene was an Greek mathematician of the 5th century BC who was admired by Plato, who mentions him in several sources. ... The Cyrenaics were an ultra-hedonist group of philosophers founded in the 4th century BC, allegedly by Aristippus of Cyrene, a disciple of Socrates. ... The bust of Zeus found at Otricoli (Sala Rotonda, Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican) Greek mythology is the body of stories belonging to the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world and their own cult and ritual practices. ... Alexander the Great (Greek: ,[1] Megas Alexandros; July 356 BC–June 11, 323 BC), also known as Alexander III, king of Macedon (336–323 BC), was one of the most successful military commanders in history. ... Pharaoh was the ancient Egyptian name for the office of kingship. ... Ptolemy, one of Alexander the Greats generals, was appointed satrap of Egypt after Alexanders death in 323 BC. In 305 BC he declared himself King Ptolemy I, later known as Soter (saviour). ... The term Hellenistic (established by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen) in the history of the ancient world is used to refer to the shift from a culture dominated by ethnic Greeks, however scattered geographically, to a culture dominated by Greek-speakers of whatever ethnicity, and from the political dominance... The bust of Zeus found at Otricoli (Sala Rotonda, Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican) Greek mythology is the body of stories belonging to the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world and their own cult and ritual practices. ...

In Classical religion, which lacked a revealed text and a prophetic tradition, a fluid theogony absorbed most contradictory claims. The tenets of Euhemerus, exceptionally, were attacked, even viciously.^[2] Euhemerist ideas survived largely in the Sicilian history of Diodorus Siculus and apparently in Philo of Byblos, who transmitted a euhemerist view of Phoenician religion, if we may trust the account of him preserved in the pages of the Christian historian Eusebius of Caesarea: "It was Eusebius' object to refute the pagans, not recover the history of Phoenicia"^[3] (see Euhemerism and the early Christians below). Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins of the gods of the ancient Greeks, ca 700 BC. // Hesiods Theogony a large-scale synthesis of a vast variety of local Greek traditions concerning the gods, organized as a narrative that tells how they came to be and how... Diodorus Siculus (c. ... Philo of Byblos (Herennios Philon), (ca 64 - 141 CE) was an antiquarian writer of grammatical, lexical and historical works in Greek, whose name Herennius makes it appear that he was a client of the Consul suffectus Herennius Severus, through whom Philo could have achieved the status of a Roman citizen. ... Phoenician sarcophagus found in Cadiz, Spain; now in Archaeological Museum of Cádiz. ... Eusebius of Caesarea Eusebius of Caesarea (c. ...

In modern times Euhemerism has been compared, specifically by David Friedrich Strauss, with many nineteenth-century German rationalists, such as Johann Gottfried Eichhorn and Heinrich Paulus, in their interpretations of the Judeo-Christian scriptures. Euhemerus's rationalizing, skeptical method, which reduces religion to what we would now call anthropology or sociology, has seemed like the forerunner of those sciences. Sigmund Freud, in Civilization and Its Discontents and The Future of an Illusion, makes religion into a kind of hopeful mirage seen by pre-scientific pre-psychoanalytic humankind. Even Freud, rebuked by Jules Romain^{[citation needed]} and other friends, worried that he-- too much the humanist-- had failed to understand the spiritual experience. "Euhemerism" is sometimes used to mean naive reductionism by modern secular thinkers, who misunderstand religious behavior by attributing to the pious only those motives (economic, psychological, utilitarian) which are secular. David Friedrich Strauss (January 27, 1808 - February 8, 1874), was a German theologian and writer. ... In epistemology and in its broadest sense, rationalism is any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification (Lacey 286). ... Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (October 16, 1752 - June 27, 1827), was a German theologian. ... Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus (born 1 September 1761, died 10 August 1851) was a German theologian and critic of the Christian bible. ... Sigmund Freud (born Sigismund Schlomo Freud) May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939; (IPA: ) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who co-founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. ... Civilization and Its Discontents is a book written by Sigmund Freud in the decade preceding his death in 1938. ... The Future of an Illusion (written 1927) by Sigmund Freud is a book that describes his interpretation of religions origins, development, psychoanalysis, and its future. ... Jules Romains photo taken by Carl Van Vechten, 1936 Jules Romains, real name Louis-henri-jean Farigoule (August 26, 1885 - August 14, 1972) was a French author and the founder of unanimism. ...

Euhemerus' Sacred History

Only quoted fragments, mainly in Diodorus Siculus, remain from Euhemerus' main work, a Sacred History ("Hiera Anagraphê"), which 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. 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;^[4] 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. As a literary genre, romance or chivalric romance refers to a style of heroic prose and verse narrative current in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. ... Persona literally means mask , although it does not usually refer to a literal mask but to the social masks all humans supposedly wear. ... Panchaea (Greek: παγχαΐα) is the name of a fictional island, first mentioned by ancient Greek philosopher Euhemerus. ... Location of the Red Sea The Red Sea is an inlet of the Indian Ocean between Africa and Asia. ... The Arabian Peninsula The Arabian Peninsula is a mainly desert peninsula in Southwest Asia at the junction of Africa and Asia and an important part of the greater Middle East. ... Eusebius of Caesarea Eusebius of Caesarea (c. ...

This lost work 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 Scythian philosopher-hero Anacharsis, or the idealized "Meropes" of Theopompushad been recently enriched by contacts with India. ^[5] Euhemerus apparently systematized a method of interpreting the popular myths, which was consistent with the attempts of Hellenistic culture to explain traditional religious beliefs in terms of a rational naturalism. Herodotus presented rationalized accounts of the myth of Io (Histories I.1ff) and events of the Trojan War (Histories 2.18ff). Euhemerus went farther, assertingthat 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.^[6] This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Roman bronze bust, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, now identified by some as possibly Hesiod Hesiod (Hesiodos, ) was an early Greek poet and rhapsode, who presumably lived around 700 BC. Hesiod and Homer, with whom Hesiod is often paired, have been considered the earliest Greek poets whose work has survived... The Creation of [A]NESIDORA] on a white-ground kylix by the Tarquinia Painter, ca 460 BCE (British Museum In Greek mythology, Pandora (all-gifted) was the first woman. ... In Greek mythology, according to tradition, the Hyperboreans were a mythical people who lived to the far north of Greece. ... Approximate extent of Scythia and Sarmatia in the 1st century BC (the orange background shows the spread of Eastern Iranian languages, among them Scytho-Sarmatian). ... Anacharsis He marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skillful in a thing vie in competition; those who have no skill, judge —Diogenes Laertius, of Anacharsis. ... Theopompus, a Greek historian and rhetorician, was born at Chios about 380 BC. 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. ... The word mythology (from the Greek μυολογία mythología, from μυολογείν mythologein to relate myths, from μύος mythos, meaning a narrative, and λόγος logos, meaning speech or argument) literally means the (oral) retelling of myths – stories that a particular culture believes to be true and that use the supernatural to interpret natural events and... The term Hellenistic (established by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen) in the history of the ancient world is used to refer to the shift from a culture dominated by ethnic Greeks, however scattered geographically, to a culture dominated by Greek-speakers of whatever ethnicity, and from the political dominance... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Jupiter and Io, Renaissance masterwork by Antonio da Correggio. ... Greek mythological characters (Most of the gods and goddesses had Roman equivalents. ... The Statue of Zeus at Olympia Phidias created the 12-m (40-ft) tall statue of Zeus at Olympia about 435 BC. The statue was perhaps the most famous sculpture in Ancient Greece, imagined here in a 16th century engraving Zeus (in Greek: nominative: Zeús, genitive: Diós), is... For the famous World War II battle, see: Battle of Crete For other uses, see Crete (disambiguation). ... A portion of Arthur Evans reconstruction of the Minoan palace at Knossos. ...

It is not easy to judge Euhemerus' importance among pagan thinkers. Cicero's essay De natura deorum ("On the nature of the gods"), iii.53ff, contains some euhemerist views that are put in the mouth of Cotta, whether as an explication or as a refutation has been argued,^[7] but how widely this reductionist system actually spread is debatable. It is said that Euhemerus was a firm upholder of the Cyrenaic philosophy, and that by many ancient writers he was regarded as an atheist: his work was translated by Ennius into Latin, but that work too is now lost. Cicero at about age 60, from an ancient marble bust Marcus Tullius Cicero (IPA:Classical Latin pronunciation: , usually pronounced in American English or in British English; January 3, 106 BC – December 7, 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, political theorist, philosopher, widely considered one of Romes greatest orators... Cyrene, the ancient Greek city (in present-day Libya) was the oldest and most important of the five Greek cities in the region and gave eastern Libya the classical name Cyrenaica that it has retained to modern times. ... For information about the band, see Atheist (band). ... Quintus Ennius (239 - 169 BC) was a writer during the period of the Roman Republic, and is often considered the father of Roman poetry. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ...

Euhemerism and the early Christians

Cyprian

The early Christian apologists deployed the euhemerist argument to support their position that pagan mythology was merely an aggregate of fables of human invention. Cyprian, a North African convert to Christianity, wrote a short essay, De idolorum vanitate ("On the Vanity of Idols") in 247 CE that takes the euhemeristic rationale as if needing no demonstration. Cyprian begins: This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... This page is about Cyprian, bishop of Carthage. ...

"That those are no gods whom the common people worship, is known from this: they were formerly kings, who on account of their royal memory subsequently began to be adored by their people even in death. Thence temples were founded to them; thence images were sculptured to retain the countenances of the deceased by the likeness; and men sacrificed victims, and celebrated festal days, by way of giving them honour. Thence to posterity those rites became sacred, which at first had been adopted as a consolation."

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 3rd century CE. 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: Look up Apotheosis in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Melicertes (later called Palaemon), in Greek mythology, the son of the Boeotian prince Athamas and Ino, daughter of Cadmus. ... Castor (or Kastor) and Polydeuces (sometimes called Pollux), were in Greek mythology the twin sons of Leda and the brothers of Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. ... The Minoans were a civilization in Crete in the Aegean Sea. ... Syncretism is the attempt to reconcile disparate, even opposing, beliefs and to meld practices of various schools of thought. ...

"From this the religion of the gods is variously changed among individual nations and provinces, inasmuch as no one god is worshipped by all, but by each one the worship of its own ancestors is kept peculiar."

Arnobius

Arnobius' dismissal of paganism in the 5th century, on rationalizing grounds, may have depended on a reading of Cyprian, with the details enormously expanded (to the satisfaction of the modern mythographer).Of the Latin translation, only a few brief fragments have come down to us, where they were quoted in patristic writers, especially in a fragment said to be from Diodorus Siculus, preserved by Eusebius in his history of the Church.Other fragments survive quoted by Lactantius in his treatise De Falsa religione ("Concerning False Religion," 1.11), not a context sympathetic to non-Christian mythography. Arnobius of Sicca (died c. ... The Church Fathers or Fathers of the Church are the early and influential theologians and writers in the Christian Church, particularly those of the first five centuries of Christian history. ... Diodorus Siculus (c. ... Eusebius is the name of several significant historical people: Pope Eusebius - Pope in AD 309 - 310. ... Lucius Caelius (or Caecilius?) Firmianus Lactantius was an early Christian author who wrote in Latin (c. ...

As among archaic tribes it's possible to trace the evolution of family and tribal gods from great eponymous chiefs and warriors, so, euhemerism claims, it's equally possible to see those gods as abstractions of the tribal ethos, personalized with names.All theories of religion which give prominence to ancestor worship and the cult of the dead are to a certain extent Euhemeristic.However, euhemerism isn't generally accepted by comparative religion scholars today as the sole explanation of the origin of the idea of gods.In 18th century France, the abbé Banier, in his Mythologie et la fable expliqués par l'histoire, was frankly Euhemeristic; other leading Euhemerists were Étienne Clavier, Sainte-Croix, Desiré-Raoul Rochette, Emile Hoffmann and, to a great extent, Herbert Spencer. An eponym is the name of a person, whether real or fictitious, who has (or is thought to have) given rise to the name of a particular place, tribe, discovery, or other item. ... Desiré-Raoul Rochette (March 6, 1790–July 3, 1854), was a French archaeologist. ... Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher and prominent classic-liberal political theorist. ...

Among the Romans the gradual deification of ancestors and the apotheosis of emperors were prominent features of cult, and extension of Greek veneration of heroes. Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew from a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula circa the 9th century BC to a massive empire straddling the Mediterranean Sea. ... Look up Apotheosis in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In traditional usage, the cult of a religion, quite apart from its sacred writings (scriptures), its theology or myths, or the personal faith of its believers, is the totality of external religious practice and observance, the neglect of which is the definition of impiety. ... Heroine (female hero) redirects here. ...

Snorri Sturluson's "euhemerism"

In the Prose Edda, composed around 1220, the Icelandic bard and historian Snorri Sturluson proposes that the Norse gods were originally historical war leaders and kings whose funereal sites have developed cults. 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 heathen religion on the wane, but (on the model of Virgil's Aeneid), to legitimize the current rulers. The Younger Edda, known also as the Prose Edda or Snorris Edda is an Icelandic manual of poetics which also contains many mythological stories. ... // The world in 1220 Middle Ages in Europe Fifth Crusade (1217-1221) Events Mongols first invade Abbasid caliphate - Bukhara and Samarkand taken End of the Kara-Khitan Khanate, destroyed by Genghis Khans Mongolian cavalry Dominican Order approved by Pope Honorius III Frederick II crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope... Snorri Sturluson (1178 – September 23, 1241) was an Icelandic historian, poet and politician. ... For other meanings of Odin, Woden or Wotan see Odin (disambiguation), Woden (disambiguation), Wotan (disambiguation). ... King Priam killed by Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, detail of an Attic red-figure amphora In Greek mythology, Priam (Greek Πρίαμος, Priamos) was the king of Troy during the Trojan War, and youngest son of Laomedon. ... Troy or Ilion, see Troy (disambiguation) and Ilion (disambiguation). ... The fall of Troy, by Johann Georg Trautmann (1713–1769). ... The Nordic countries (Greenland not shown) The Nordic countries is a term used collectively for five countries in Northern Europe. ... Publius Vergilius Maro (October 15, 70 BC – September 21, 19 BC), later called Virgilius, and known in English as Virgil or Vergil, was a classical Roman poet, the author of the Eclogues, the Georgics and the substantially completed Aeneid, the last being an epic poem of twelve books that became... The Aeneid (IPA English pronunciation: ; in Latin Aeneis, pronounced — the title is Greek in form: genitive case Aeneidos): is a Latin epic written by Virgil in the 1st century BC (between 29 and 19 BC) that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he...

Euhemerism in the modern world

Rationalizing methods of interpretation that treat some myths as traditional accounts based upon actual historical events are a feature of some modern readings of Greek mythology. The twentieth century poet and mythographer Robert Graves offered many such "euhemerist" interpretations in his telling of 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 skepticism.^{[citation needed]} Axel Olrik, in Principles for Oral Narrative Research(1921; translated by Kirsten Wolf and Jody Jensen, 1992) denies (§30) that such readings could be valid. Portrait of Robert Graves (circa 1974) by Rab Shiell Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 5 November 1955) was an English poet, scholar, and novelist. ... The Greek Myths (1955) is a comprehensive anthology of Greek mythology, published in two volumes. ... Axel Olrik (1864-1917) was a Danish folklorist, a pioneer in the methodical study of oral narrative. ...

See also

• Mythological kings of Sweden
• List of legendary kings of Britain
• Mythological Anglo-Saxon kings

In sources such as Heimskringla and Ynglinga saga there appear early Swedish kings who belong in the domain of mythology, but it is often suggested that they have a historical basis. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards and to make a clear distinction between fact and fiction, this article may require cleanup. ... This is the article about the West Germanic deity, for other uses see Woden (disambiguation), Wotan (disambiguation). ...

Notes

Callimachus (Greek: ; ca. ... Mestrius Plutarchus (Greek: Πλούταρχος; 46 - 127), better known in English as Plutarch, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist. ... Look up Barbarian in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... PLATO was one of the first generalized Computer assisted instruction systems, originally built by the University of Illinois (U of I) and later taken over by Control Data Corporation (CDC), who provided the machines it ran on. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...

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

References

• Smith, William. 1870. "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology." (London: C. Little and J. Brown) sub "Evemerus"
• Abbé Banier's Ovid commentary Englished The Euhemerist tradition in Banier's "historical" commentaries on Ovid's Metamorphoses.
• Brown, Truesdell S. "Euhemerus and the Historians" The Harvard Theological Review 39.4 (October 1946), pp. 259-274. Includes a comprehensive redaction of the existing fragments of Euhemerus' Sacred History.