Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/443

 EUEMERUS. 4H writers employed their ingenuity in transforming the mythical circumstances into plausible matter of history : Ephorus, in par- ticular, converted the serpent Pytho, slain by Apollo, into a ty- rannical king. 1 But the author who pushed this transmutation of legend into history to the greatest length, was the Messenian Euemerus, con- remporary of Kassander of Macedon. He melted down in this way the divine person? and legends, as well as the heroic rep- resenting both gods and heroes as having been mere earthborn men, though superior to the ordinary level in respect of force and capacity, and deified or heroified after death as a recompense for services or striking exploits. In the course of a voyage into the Indian sea, undertaken by command of Kassander, Euemerus professed to have discovered a fabulous country called Panchaia, in which was a temple of the Triphylian Zeus: he there de- scribed a golden column, with an inscription purporting to have been put up by Zeus himself, and detailing his exploits while on earth. 2 Some eminent men, among whom may be numbered Polybius, followed the views of Euemerus, and the Roman poet Ennius 3 translated his Historia Sacra ; but on the whole he never acquired favor, and the unblushing inventions which he put into circulation were of themselves sufficient to disgrace both the au- thor and his opinions. The doctrine that all the gods had once existed as mere men offended the religious pagans, and drew upon Euemerus the imputation of atheism ; but, on the other hand, it came to be warmly espoused by several of the Christian assailants of paganism, by Minucius Felix, Lactantius, and St. Augustin, who found the ground ready prepared for them in their efforts to strip Zeus and the other pagan gods of the attri- butes of deity. They believed not only in the main theory, but also in the copious details of Euemerus ; and the same man whom Strabo casts aside as almost a proverb for mendacity, was ex- descendants of Troy (Plutarch, Nikias, 1), a naked reproduction of gen- uine epical agencies by an historian ; also about Diomedes and the Dauni- ans ; Phae'thon and the river Eridanus ; the combats of the Gigantes in the Phlegrsean plains (Fragm. 97, 99, 102). 1 Strabo, ix. p. 422. 3 Compare Diodor. v. 44-46 ; and Lactantius, De Falsi Relig. i. 11. 3 Cicero, De NaturA Deor. i. 42 ; Varro, De Re Rust. i. 48.