EUPOLEMO. — Palestinian Hebrew, son of John, mentioned in I Mach., 8:17 and II Mach., 4:11. Sent to Rome around 161 B.C. by Judas Maccabeus, he concluded an alliance with the Romans. He is probably to be identified with the historian E., who wrote in Greek about Jewish matters, strongly Hellenizing the biblical figures and presenting, for example, Moses as a great sage who taught the art of writing, which was subsequently passed on to the Phoenicians and the Greeks.
According to Flavius Josephus (Contra Apionem, I, 23), this historian E. was a pagan, but the opinion of Eusebius (Hist. eccl., 6, 13: PG 20, 548) and St. Jerome (De viris ill., 38: PL 23, 633), who identify our E. with the Hebrew sent to Rome by Judas Maccabeus, is more likely.
BIBL.: E. Schürer, Geschichte des jüd. Volkes, III, 4th ed., Liosia 1909, pp. 474–77. Pietro De Ambroggi