Euhemerism

Euhemerism, the name usually applied to the historical theory of the origin of mythology from Euhemerus, a native of Messene and a contemporary of Cassander of Macedonia in the 4th century B.C. In the course of a voyage to the Indian Sea he professed to have discovered an island called Panchaia, in which he found a number of inscriptions representing the principal gods of Greece as mere earth-born kings and heroes deified after death for their superior strength or capacity. His book, entitled Hiera Anagraphê, is lost, as well as its Latin translation by Ennius. It drew upon him the imputation of atheism, and its unblushing inventions made his name with honest inquirers, such as Strabo, a byword for mendacity. Its main theory, however, was adopted by many eminent men, including Polybius, as well as by several of the Christian assailants of paganism—by Minucius Felix, Lactantius, and St Augustine, who found the ground ready prepared for them in their efforts to strip Zeus and the other pagan gods of the attributes of deity. Later Greek writers carried the theory still further, eliminating everything supernatural or extravagant, and leaving only a string of tales perfectly credible and commonplace. Æolus became an ancient mariner with a special knowledge of the winds, the Cyclopes a race of savages inhabiting Sicily, Atlas a great astronomer, and Scylla a fast-sailing pirate, as was also Pegasus, the winged horse of Bellerophon. Nor has this system yet disappeared from some of the current handbooks of mythology and history. Jupiter is still spoken of as a king of Crete, and Hercules as a Greek adventurer of uncommon strength, while the wars of Troy hold in the minds of many as respectable a place as the struggle between Athens and Sparta or Caesar's campaigns in Gaul. Euhemerism was the favourite theory with the soi-disant philosophical historians of the 18th century in France, and the translation of Abbé Banier's great work, The Mythology and Fables of Antiquity, explained from History (Lond. 6 vols. 1739), extended it to England. To this school belong also writers such as Vossius, Bochart, and Huet, who find traces not merely of profane but of sacred history in Greek mythology. Saturn is identified with Noah; his sons, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, with Shem, Ham, and Japhet; while Vulcan corresponds with Tubal Cain, and Phaethon with Elijah. The latest and ablest exponent of sacred euhemerism is Mr Gladstone, who sees in Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon the dimmed figures of the Christian Trinity; in Apollo, the Jewish Messiah; and in his mother Latona, the woman whose seed should bruise the serpent's head. Herbert Spencer is also an euhemerist in his explanation of the origin of religion. He bases all the religious emotions on primitive ancestor-worship, and explains totemism, a condition everywhere present in the savage world, as due originally to mere human nicknames, which were gradually forgotten, and afterwards came to have a sense of mystery connected with them.