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53-451: The philosophy attributed to and named for Euhemerus, euhemerism , holds that many mythological tales can be attributed to historical persons and events, the accounts of which have become altered and exaggerated over time. Euhemerus's work combined elements of fiction and political utopianism. Early Christian writers, such as Lactantius , used Euhemerus's belief that the ancient gods were originally human to confirm their inferiority regarding

106-513: A consolation. Cyprian proceeds directly to examples, the apotheosis of Melicertes and Leucothea ; "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 and Dionysus but showing that

159-469: A distant Golden Age , of Hesiod 's depiction of human happiness before the gift of Pandora , of the mythic convention of idealized Hyperboreans , made concrete in the legendary figure of the Scythian philosopher-hero Anacharsis , or the idealized "Meropes" of Theopompus had been recently enriched by contacts with India . Euhemerus apparently systematized a method of interpreting the popular myths , which

212-722: A general trend of centralisation of power, so that by the Late Middle Ages there were a number of large and powerful kingdoms in Europe, which would develop into the great powers of Europe in the Early Modern period . By the end of the Middle Ages, the kings of these kingdoms would start to place arches with an orb and cross on top as an Imperial crown , which only the Holy Roman Emperor had had before. This symbolized them holding

265-420: A philosophical Romance , incorporating imagined archaic inscriptions, which his literary persona claimed to have found during his travels. Euhemerus claims to have traveled to a group of islands in the waters off Arabia. One of these, Panchaea , being home to a utopian society made up of a number of different ethnic tribes. His critique of tradition is epitomized in a register of the births and deaths of many of

318-407: 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. Socrates illustrates a euhemeristic approach to the myth of Boreas abducting Orithyia . He shows how the story of Boreas, the northern wind, can be rationalised: Orithyia is pushed off

371-484: A reading of Cyprian, with the details enormously expanded. Isidore of Seville , compiler of the most influential early medieval encyclopedia, devoted a chapter De diis gentium to elucidating, with numerous examples and elaborated genealogies of gods, the principle drawn from Lactantius , 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

424-407: Is an absolute, when he holds the whole legislative , judicial , and executive power , or when the legislative or judicial powers, or both, are vested in other people by the king. Kings are hereditary sovereigns when they hold the powers of government by right of birth or inheritance, and elective when raised to the throne by choice. The term king may also refer to a king consort , a title that

477-409: Is called the "historical interpretation" of mythology. Euhemerism is defined in modern academic literature as the theory that myths are distorted accounts of real historical events. Euhemerus was not the first to attempt to rationalize mythology through history, as euhemeristic views are found in earlier writers, including Xenophanes , Herodotus , Hecataeus of Abdera , and Ephorus , however, Euhemerus

530-462: Is credited as having developed the theory in application to all myths, considering mythology to be "history in disguise". Euhemerism Euhemerism ( / j uː ˈ h iː m ər ɪ z əm , - h ɛ m -/ ) is an approach to the interpretation of mythology 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

583-640: Is kept peculiar. Eusebius in his Chronicle employed euhemerism to argue the Babylonian God Baʿal was a deified ruler and that the god Belus was the first Assyrian king. Euhemeristic views are found expressed also in Tertullian ( De idololatria ), the Octavius of Marcus Minucius Felix and in Origen . Arnobius ' dismissal of paganism in the fifth century, on rationalizing grounds, may have depended on

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636-474: Is of Germanic origin, and historically refers to Germanic kingship , in the pre-Christian period a type of tribal kingship . The monarchies of Europe in the Christian Middle Ages derived their claim from Christianisation and the divine right of kings , partly influenced by the notion of sacral kingship inherited from Germanic antiquity . The Early Middle Ages begin with a fragmentation of

689-563: Is sometimes given to the husband of a queen regnant , but the title of prince consort is more common. The English term king is derived from the Anglo-Saxon cyning , which in turn is derived from the Common Germanic * kuningaz . The Common Germanic term was borrowed into Estonian and Finnish at an early time, surviving in these languages as kuningas . It is a derivation from the term *kunjom "kin" ( Old English cynn ) by

742-559: The -inga- suffix. The literal meaning is that of a "scion of the [noble] kin", or perhaps "son or descendant of one of noble birth" ( OED ). The English term translates, and is considered equivalent to, Latin rēx and its equivalents in the various European languages . The Germanic term is notably different from the word for "King" in other Indo-European languages ( *rēks "ruler"; Latin rēx , Sanskrit rājan and Irish rí ; however, see Gothic reiks and, e.g., modern German Reich and modern Dutch rijk ). The English word

795-751: The Christian God . Little is known about Euhemerus's life, and his birthplace is disputed. Classical writers such as Diodorus Siculus , Plutarch , and Polybius , maintained that Euhemerus was a Messenian, but did not specify whether he came from the Peloponnesian or the Sicilian Messene, which was an ancient Greek colony. Other ancient testimonies placed his birth at Chios , Tegea (Pseudo-Plutarch, Plac. Phil. ), or Agrigentum ( Clement of Alexandria , Protrept. ; Arnobius, Adv. Gent. ). Most modern scholars, however, generally agree that Euhemerus came from

848-565: The Church Fathers , embraced euhemerism in attempt to undermine the validity of pagan gods. The usefulness of euhemerist views to early Christian apologists may be summed up in Clement of Alexandria 's triumphant cry in Cohortatio ad gentes : "Those to whom you bow were once men like yourselves." The Wisdom of Solomon , a deuterocanonical book , has a passage giving a euhemerist explanation of

901-471: The Minoan cave cult was still alive in Crete in the third century AD. In his exposition, it is to Cyprian's argument to marginalize the syncretism 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

954-486: The anthropocentric origin of religion, through ancestor 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 mythographer Robert Graves offered many such "euhemerist" interpretations in his telling of The White Goddess (1948) and The Greek Myths (1955). His suggestions that such myths record and justify

1007-524: The early modern period from the 16th century, to modern times. In 1711, the French historian Antoine Banier in his Mythologie 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. Jacob Bryant 's A New System or Analysis of Ancient Mythology (1744) was also another key work on euhemerism of

1060-529: The imperium and being emperors in their own realm not subject even theoretically anymore to the Holy Roman Emperor. Philosophers Works Currently (as of 2023 ), seventeen kings are recognized as the heads of state of sovereign states (i.e. English king is used as official translation of the respective native titles held by the monarchs). Most of these are heads of state of constitutional monarchies ; kings ruling over absolute monarchies are

1113-484: The Arabian geography of his fifth book and in the mythology of his sixth book. The sixth book of Diodorus’ Bibliotheca is lost, but Eusebius cites a fragment from it at length in his Praeparatio evangelica . The ancient Roman writer Ennius first translated Euhemerus' work into Latin, but this translation also is lost. Lactantius however in the third century AD included substantial references to Ennius' translation in

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1166-452: The Cretans into thinking that Zeus had died and was buried there. Influenced by Euhemerus, Porphyry in the 3rd century AD claimed that Pythagoras 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". Varro also wrote about the tomb of Zeus. Hostile to paganism, the early Christians, such as

1219-472: The Middle Ages through the realization 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

1272-662: The Sicilian Messene ( Messina ). Diodorus Siculus is one of the very few sources who provide other details about Euhemerus' life. According to Diodorus, Euhemerus was a personal friend of Cassander , king of Macedonia (c. 305 – 297 BC) and the most prominent mythographer for the Macedonian court. Sometime in the early third century BC Euhemerus wrote his main work "Sacred History" ("Hiera Anagraphê"). Only quoted fragments remain from Euhemerus' main work, Sacred History . Diodorus Siculus included fragments from Euhemerus’ writings in

1325-479: The ancient skeptic philosophical tradition of Theodorus of Cyrene and the Cyrenaics , 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 of Greek mythology could be interpreted as natural or historical events subsequently given supernatural characteristics through retelling. Subsequently, Euhemerus

1378-467: 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

1431-550: The deities, which his narrator persona discovered inscribed on a golden pillar in a temple of Zeus Triphylius on the invented island of Panchaea ; he claimed to have reached the island on a voyage down the Red Sea round the coast of Arabia , undertaken at the request of Cassander, according to the Christian historian of the fourth century AD, Eusebius . Euhemerus refers to a rational island utopia . The ancient Hellenic tradition of

1484-522: The enduring influence of Euhemerus upon later thinkers such as the classical poet Ennius (b. 239 BC) and modern author Antoine Banier (b. 1673 AD) identified him as the traditional founder of this school of thought. In a scene described in Plato's Phaedrus , Socrates offers a euhemeristic interpretation of a myth concerning Boreas and Orithyia : Phaedr. On the way to the Ilissus Phaedrus asks

1537-460: 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." Other modern theorists labeled Euhemerism as a "subject of classical paganism that was fostered in the minds of the people of

1590-414: The first book of his Divine Institutes . Various other fragments of importance are also found in the later literature of Augustine of Hippo . From these extant fragments and references, modern scholars have been able to "compile what is presumably a fairly complete picture of Euhemerus’ work". Euhemerus' work may have taken the form of a philosophical fictionalized travelogue, universally accepted today as

1643-636: The former Western Roman Empire into barbarian kingdoms . In Western Europe, the kingdom of the Franks developed into the Carolingian Empire by the 8th century, and the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England were unified into the kingdom of England by the 10th century. With the breakup of the Carolingian Empire in the 9th century, the system of feudalism places kings at the head of a pyramid of relationships between liege lords and vassals, dependent on

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1696-612: The imagination but rather believed that they were or had been real beings, sometimes possessing actual power" (John Daniel Cook). In the Prose Edda , composed around 1220, the Christian Icelandic bard and historian Snorri 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 from Asia Minor , tracing his ancestry back to Priam ,

1749-449: The inscription bearing his name. This claim however did not originate with Euhemerus, as the general sentiment of Crete during the time of Epimenides of Knossos (c. 600 BC) was that Zeus was buried somewhere in Crete. For this reason, the Cretans were often considered atheists , and Epimenides called them all liars (see Epimenides paradox ). Callimachus , an opponent of Euhemerus' views on mythology , argued that Zeus' Cretan tomb

1802-595: The king of Troy during the Trojan War . As Odin travels north to settle in the Nordic countries , he establishes the royal families ruling in Denmark , Sweden and Norway at the time: And whatever countries they passed through, great glory was spoken of them, so that they seemed more like gods than men. Snorri's euhemerism follows the early Christian tradition. Euhemeristic interpretations of mythology continued throughout

1855-695: The mighty human spirits of the patriarchs of the Old Testament . Martin of Braga , in his De correctione rusticorum , wrote that idolatry stemmed from post-deluge survivors of Noah's family, who began to worship the sun and stars instead of God . In his view, the Greek gods were deified descendants of Noah who were once real personages. Christian writers during the Middle Ages continued to embrace euhemerism, such as Vincent of Beauvais , Petrus Comestor , Roger Bacon and Godfrey of Viterbo . "After all, it

1908-474: 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

1961-502: The origin of idols. The early Christian apologists deployed the euhemerist argument to support their position that pagan mythology was merely an aggregate of fables of human invention. Cyprian , a North African convert to Christianity, wrote a short essay De 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

2014-442: The period, but argued so from a Biblical basis. Of the early 19th century, George Stanley Faber was another Biblical euhemerist. His work The 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

2067-406: The political and religious overthrow of earlier cult systems have been widely criticized and are rejected by most scholars. Author Richard 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

2120-416: 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. In this framing, rather than being presumed to have originated from real historical events or personages, the mythological accounts are claimed to have had such origins, and historical accounts invented accordingly – such that, counter to

2173-652: The regional rule of barons , and the intermediate positions of counts (or earls ) and dukes . The core of European feudal manorialism in the High Middle Ages were the territories of the former Carolingian Empire , i.e. the kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire (centered on the nominal kingdoms of Germany and Italy ). In the course of the European Middle Ages, the European kingdoms underwent

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2226-560: The retelling, accumulating elaborations and alterations that reflect cultural mores . It was named after the Greek mythographer Euhemerus , who lived in the late 4th century BC. In the more recent literature of myth, such as Bulfinch's Mythology , euhemerism is termed the "historical theory" of mythology. Euhemerus was not the first to attempt to rationalize mythology in historical terms: euhemeristic views are found in earlier writings including those of Sanchuniathon , Xenophanes , Herodotus , Hecataeus of Abdera and Ephorus . However,

2279-481: 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 as Centaurs and the Chimera could not easily be explained. In

2332-467: 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 in Petrus Comestor 's appendix to his much translated Historia scholastica (written c. 1160), further condensing Isidore to provide strict parallels of figures from the pagan legend , as it was now viewed in historicised narrative, and

2385-489: 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

2438-600: The tomb of Zeus was shown to visitors near Knossos , perhaps engendering or enhancing among the traditionalists the reputation of Cretans as liars. Euhemerus has become known chiefly for a rationalizing method of interpretation, known as "euhemerism", which treats mythological accounts as a reflection of historical events, or mythological characters as historical personages, but which were shaped, exaggerated, or altered by retelling and traditional mores . In more recent literature of myth, such as in Bulfinch's Mythology , euhemerism

2491-423: The usual sense of "Euhemerism", in "euhemerization" a mythological figure is in fact transformed into a (pseudo)historical one. King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. A king is an absolute monarch if he holds the powers of government without control, or the entire sovereignty over a nation ; he is a limited monarch if his power is restrained by fixed laws; and he

2544-517: 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 of Homer . He excavated Troy and claimed to have discovered artifacts associated with various figures from Greek mythology, including the Mask of Agamemnon and Priam's Treasure . Herbert Spencer embraced some euhemeristic arguments in attempt to explain

2597-513: Was alive and modern scholars consider his apotheosis to have influenced Euhemerus' views on the origin of all gods. Euhemerus was also living during the contemporaneous deification of the Seleucids and " pharaoization " of the Ptolemies in a fusion of Hellenic and Egyptian traditions. Euhemerus argued that Zeus was a mortal king who died on Crete , and that his tomb could still be found there with

2650-403: Was considered to be an atheist by his opponents, most notably Callimachus . Euhemerus' views were rooted in the deification of men, usually kings, into gods through apotheosis . 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 of Syracuse , was deified while he

2703-402: Was consistent with the attempts of Hellenistic culture to explain traditional religious beliefs in terms of a naturalism. Euhemerus asserted that the Greek gods originally had been kings , heroes, and conquerors, or benefactors to the people, who had thus earned a claim to the veneration of their subjects. According to him, for example, Zeus was a king of Crete , who had been a great conqueror;

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2756-412: 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

2809-517: 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. A later Latin scholium on the Hymns of Callimachus attempted to account for the tomb of Zeus. According to the scholium, the original tomb inscription read: "The tomb of Minos , the son of Jupiter " but over time the words "Minos, the son" wore away leaving only "the tomb of Jupiter". This had misled

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