In the fields ofphilosophy andmythography,euhemerism (/juːˈhiːmərɪzəm,-hɛm-/) is an approach to theinterpretation ofmythology in which mythological accounts are presumed to have originated from real historical events or personages. Euhemerism supposes that historical accounts become myths as they are exaggerated in the retelling, accumulating elaborations and alterations that reflect culturalmores. It was named after the Greek mythographerEuhemerus, who lived in the late 4th century BC. In the more recent literature of myth, such asBulfinch's Mythology, euhemerism is termed the "historical theory" of mythology.[1]
Euhemerus was not the first to attempt to rationalize mythology in historical terms: euhemeristic views are found in earlier writings including those ofSanchuniathon,Xenophanes,Herodotus,Hecataeus of Abdera andEphorus.[2][3] However, the enduring influence of Euhemerus upon later thinkers such as the classical poetEnnius (b. 239 BC) and modern authorAntoine Banier (b. 1673 AD) identified him as the traditional founder of this school of thought.[4]
In a scene described in Plato'sPhaedrus,Socrates offers a euhemeristic interpretation of a myth concerningBoreas andOrithyia:
Phaedr. On the way to the Ilissus Phaedrus asks the opinion of Socrates respecting the truth of a local legend.
I should like to know, Socrates, whether the place is not somewhere here at which Boreas is said to have carried off Orithyia from the banks of the Ilissus?
Soc. Such is the tradition.
Phaedr. And is this the exact spot? The little stream is delightfully clear and bright; I can fancy that there might be maidens playing near.
Soc. I believe that the spot is not exactly here, but about a quarter of a mile lower down, where you cross to the temple of Artemis, and there is, I think, some sort of an altar of Boreas at the place.
Phaedr. I have never noticed it; but I beseech you to tell me, Socrates, do you believe this tale?
Soc. Socrates desires to know himself before he enquires into the newly found philosophy of mythology.
The wise are doubtful, and I should not be singular if, like them, I too doubted. I might have a rational explanation that Orithyia was playing with Pharmacia, when a northern gust carried her over the neighbouring rocks; and this being the manner of her death, she was said to have been carried away by Boreas.[5]
Socrates illustrates a euhemeristic approach to the myth ofBoreas abductingOrithyia. He shows how the story of Boreas, the northern wind, can be rationalised: Orithyia is pushed off the rock cliffs through the equation of Boreas with a natural gust of wind, which accepts Orithyia as a historical personage. But here he also implies that this is equivalent to rejecting the myth. Socrates, despite holding some euhemeristic views, mocked the concept that all myths could be rationalized, noting that the mythical creatures of "absurd forms" such asCentaurs and theChimera could not easily be explained.[6]
In the ancientskeptic philosophical tradition ofTheodorus of Cyrene and theCyrenaics, 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 ofGreek mythology could be interpreted as natural or historical events subsequently given supernatural characteristics through retelling. Subsequently, Euhemerus was considered to be anatheist by his opponents, most notablyCallimachus.[7]
Euhemerus's views were rooted in the deification of men, usually kings, into gods throughapotheosis. In numerous 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 ofSyracuse, was deified while he was alive and modern scholars consider his apotheosis to have influenced Euhemerus' views on the origin of all gods.[8] Euhemerus was also living during the contemporaneous deification of theSeleucids and "pharaoization" of thePtolemies in a fusion of Hellenic and Egyptian traditions.
Euhemerus argued thatZeus was a mortal king who died onCrete, and that his tomb could still be found there with the inscription bearing his name.[9] This claim however did not originate with Euhemerus, as the general sentiment of Crete during the time ofEpimenides ofKnossos (c. 600 BC) was that Zeus was buried somewhere in Crete. For this reason, the Cretans were often consideredatheists, and Epimenides called them all liars (seeEpimenides paradox).Callimachus, an opponent of Euhemerus's views onmythology, argued that Zeus's Cretan tomb was fabricated, and that he was eternal:
Cretans always lie. For the Cretans even built a tomb,
Lord, for you. But you did not die, for you are eternal.[10]
A later Latinscholium on theHymns of Callimachus attempted to account for the tomb of Zeus. According to the scholium, the original tomb inscription read: "The tomb ofMinos, the son ofJupiter" but over time the words "Minos, the son" wore away leaving only "the tomb of Jupiter". This had misled the Cretans into thinking that Zeus had died and was buried there.[11]
Influenced by Euhemerus,Porphyry in the 3rd century AD claimed thatPythagoras 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".[12]Varro also wrote about the tomb of Zeus.
Hostile to paganism, the early Christians, such as theChurch Fathers, embraced euhemerism in attempt to undermine the validity of pagan gods.[13] The usefulness of euhemerist views to early Christian apologists may be summed up inClement of Alexandria's triumphant cry inCohortatio ad gentes: "Those to whom you bow were once men like yourselves."[14]
TheWisdom of Solomon, adeuterocanonical book, has a passage giving a euhemerist explanation of the origin of idols.[15]
Theearly Christianapologists deployed the euhemerist argument to support their position that pagan mythology was merely an aggregate offables of human invention.Cyprian, a North African convert to Christianity, wrote a short essayDe idolorum vanitate ("On the Vanity of Idols") in 247 AD that assumes the euhemeristic rationale as though it needed no demonstration. Cyprian begins:
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, theapotheosis ofMelicertes andLeucothea; "The Castors [i.e.Castor and Pollux] 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 andDionysus but showing that theMinoan cave cult was still alive in Crete in the third century AD. In his exposition, it is to Cyprian's argument to marginalize thesyncretism of pagan belief, in order to emphasize the individual variety of local deities:
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.
Eusebius in hisChronicle employed euhemerism to argue the Babylonian GodBaʿal was a deified ruler and that the godBelus was the first Assyrian king.[16]
Euhemeristic views are found expressed also inTertullian (De idololatria), theOctavius ofMarcus Minucius Felix and inOrigen.[17]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 chapterDe diis gentium[18] to elucidating, with numerous examples and elaborated genealogies of gods, the principle drawn fromLactantius,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 inPetrus Comestor's appendix to his much translatedHistoria scholastica (written c. 1160), further condensing Isidore to provide strict parallels of figures from the paganlegend, as it was now viewed in historicised narrative, and the mighty human spirits of the patriarchs of theOld Testament.[19]Martin of Braga, in hisDe correctione rusticorum, wrote that idolatry stemmed from post-deluge survivors of Noah's family, who began to worship thesun and stars instead ofGod. In his view, the Greek gods were deified descendants ofNoah who were once real personages.[20]
Christian writers during theMiddle Ages continued to embrace euhemerism, such asVincent of Beauvais,Petrus Comestor,Roger Bacon andGodfrey of Viterbo.[21][22] According to John Daniel Cooke, medieval Christian scholars embraced euhemerism because they believed that:
While in most respects the ancient Greeks and Roman had been superior to themselves, they had been in error regarding their religious beliefs. An examination of the principal writings in Middle English with considerable reading of literature other than English, discloses the fact that the people of the Middle Ages rarely regarded the so-called gods as mere figments of the imagination but rather believed that they were or had been real beings, sometimes possessing actual power.[21]
Other scholars have written that:
It was during this time that Christian apologists had adopted the views of the rationalist Greek philosophers. And had captured the purpose for Euhemerism, which was to explain the mundane origins of the Hellenistic divinities. Euhemerism explained simply in two ways: first in the strictest sense as a movement which reflected the known views of Euhemerus' Hiera Anagraphe regarding Panchaia and the historicity of the family of Saturn and Uranus. The principal sources of these views are the handed-down accounts of Lactantius and Diodorus; or second, in the widest sense, as a rationalist movement which sought to explain the mundane origins of all the Hellenistic gods and heroes as mortals.[This quote needs a citation]
In theProse Edda, composed around 1220, the Christian Icelandic bard and historianSnorri Sturluson proposes that the Norse gods were originally historical leaders and kings.Odin, the father of the gods, is introduced as a historical person originally fromAsia Minor, tracing his ancestry back toPriam, the king ofTroy during theTrojan War.[23][24]
As Odin travels north to settle in theNordic countries, he establishes the royal families ruling inDenmark,Sweden andNorway at the time:
And whatever countries they passed through, great glory was spoken of them, so that they seemed more like gods than men.[25]
Snorri's euhemerism follows the early Christian tradition.[citation needed]
Euhemeristic interpretations of mythology continued throughout theearly modern period from the 16th century,[26] to modern times. In 1711, the French historianAntoine Banier in hisMythologie 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.[27]Jacob Bryant'sA 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 Biblical euhemerist. His workThe 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 myths could verify archaeological findings.Heinrich Schliemann was a prominent archaeologist of the 19th century who argued myths had historical truths embedded in them. Schliemann was an advocate of the historical reality of places and characters mentioned in the works ofHomer. He excavatedTroy and claimed to have discovered artifacts associated with various figures from Greek mythology, including theMask of Agamemnon andPriam's Treasure.
Herbert Spencer embraced some euhemeristic arguments in attempt to explain theanthropocentric origin of religion, throughancestor worship. Rationalizing methods of interpretation that treat some myths as traditional accounts based upon historical events are a continuous feature of some modern readings of mythology.
The twentieth century poet and mythographerRobert Graves offered many such "euhemerist" interpretations in his telling ofThe White Goddess (1948) andThe Greek Myths (1955). His suggestions that such myths record and justify the political and religious overthrow of earlier cult systems have been widely criticized and are rejected by most scholars.[28][excessive citations]
AuthorRichard Carrier defines "euhemerization" as "the taking of a cosmic god and placing him at a definite point in history as an actual person who was later deified".
Euhemerus ... depicted an imaginary scholar discovering that Zeus and Uranus were once actual kings. In the process Euhemerus invents a history for these 'god kings', even though we know there is no plausible case to be made that either Zeus or Uranus was ever a real person.[29]
In this framing, rather than beingpresumed to have originated from real historical events or personages, the mythological accounts areclaimed to have had such origins, and historical accounts invented accordingly – such that, counter to the usual sense of "Euhemerism", in "euhemerization" a mythological figure is in fact transformed into a (pseudo)historical one.
