EVEMERO. – Greek philosopher. Almost nothing is known of his life: a native of Messene (it is uncertain whether of Messene in Sicily or that of the Peloponnese), he was a friend of King Cassander (317–298 B.C.) and published his principal work, the Ἱερὰ ἀναγραφή, around 280, as may be inferred from Callimachus.
Only a few Greek fragments of this writing have survived, and these in reworked form; others have survived in Latin, transmitted by Christian authors—above all Lactantius—who certainly drew upon the translation (and reworking) of E.’s work made in the 3rd century B.C. by the poet Ennius.
In this “description” E. relates (cf. Diodorus, V, 41–46; VI, 11, 4 ff.) that during a journey from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean he had encountered a group of islands. Having landed on one of them (Panchaia), he described its customs in detail: the division of the population into three social classes (priests-irrigators, farmers, soldiers), the exclusive political predominance of the priests, the equitable distribution among all of the island’s products, etc. He also reported having visited the temple of Zeus Triphylian, where Zeus himself, while he was still alive, had wished to transmit to posterity, engraving it on a stele, the memory of the most famous deeds of his ancestors, beginning with Uranus, the first king on earth, and ending with the age of his own happy reign.
In this way, all mythology was reduced by E. from the divine to the human plane. The Ἱερὰ ἀναγραφή, however, was not original in its theoretical premises, either social or religious. While the former were inspired by those communist utopias so common in the 4th century, whose most luminous example was above all Plato’s Republic, the latter, rationalistic insofar as they denied mythology any objective value by holding that the ancient gods had been rulers elevated to the rank of divinities because of their works on behalf of humankind, had very distant precedents—even if they had perhaps not been fully formulated: Hecataeus of Miletus, Herodotus, Erodorus of Heraclea, etc. In addition to these, E. had a more immediate precursor in Hecataeus of Teos, from the period of Ptolemy (323–285 B.C.), who had reached the conclusion that the Greek gods, like the Egyptian gods, were nothing more than benefactors devoted to humanity.
Nevertheless, despite its many advocates, this theory—whether because E. formulated it more effectively or because his work was more widely known and appreciated—remained associated with his name and came to be called Euhemerism.
In Greece, apart from a few late and insignificant followers (Leone of Pella, Dionysius Scytobrachion), Euhemerism was unequivocally rejected, and E.’s account was held to be a forgery (Callimachus, Eratosthenes, Strabo, Plutarch): to the fervent Hellenic imagination, such a flat theory was bound to be deeply repugnant.
In Rome, on the other hand, Euhemerism met with approval: Ennius had considered E.’s work worthy of translation (giving it the title: Eubemerus, sive Sacra historia), perhaps in order to popularize those principles that almost justified the crude religious rationalism of the Roman world, where, for example, the most archaic divinities of Latium, such as Janus, Saturn, Picus, Faunus, etc., were regarded as ancient indigenous kings, and famous myths, such as those of Romulus, Horatius Cocles, Cloelia, etc., had become authentic events of the earliest history of Rome.
E.’s theories, through Ennius’s translation, became known and were accepted by Christian apologists and controversialists, who availed themselves of this convenient weapon, offered by their opponents themselves, to demonstrate to the pagans the falsity of their religion.
BIBLI: F. Jacoby, s. V. in Pauly-Nissowa, VI, cols. 932–721; J. Geffesen, Eubemerism, in Eos, of Rel, and Eth, V, p. 372 ff.; A. Pincherle, Gli oracoli tibilini giudizi, Rome 1922, p. XII; A. B. Drachmann, Atheism in pagan antiquity, London 1922, p. 84; the fragments are collected in F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente d. griech. Historiker, I, Berlin 1923, p. 300 ff.
Cesare d’Onofrio
EVENZIO ■ TEODULO, saints, martyrs: V. ALESSANDRO, EVENZIO e TEODULO, saints, martyrs.