Euhemerus
c. 300 BCE
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NOTE |
Euhemerus was a Greek mythographer at the court of Cassander of Macedon around 300 BCE. Little is known of his life. His birthplace is variously conjectured to be Messina, Chios, or Tegea, with Messina in Sicily being the scholarly consensus. While at the court of Cassander, Euhemerus wrote the Hiera Anagraphè (Sacred History), a rationalization of mythology that introduced the idea that the gods had been human kings in ancient times that the ignorant had come to worship as divine. His efforts to provide a plausible and earthly explanation for the stories of myth and legend became highly influential and gave rise to the school of mythology now known by his name, euhemerism, a belief system that colored everything from medieval historiography to the ancient astronaut theory. Ennius made a Latin translation that itself became influential among Roman authors.
However, the Sacred History was lost, as was Ennius’ translation, and all that remain are fragments and testimonies from authors who knew of one or the other book either directly or indirectly. Several collections of the fragments of Euhemerus have been published. Marek Winiarczyk published the standard modern edition of the Greek and Latin texts in 1991, which C. L. Caspers translated into English in 2021. These collections were organized by author. In 1889, the Hungarian literary historian and classicist Geyza Némethy attempted to organize the extant fragments known to him according to the outlines scholars had conjectured of the narrative of the Sacred History, approximating the experience of reading Euhemerus’ original work. For this first (and only) online English collection of the fragments of Euhemerus, collected from public domain sources and my own work, I have followed Némethy’s proposed organizational framework and his numbering of the fragments, and I have included his introductory summary of the work as a whole. I have supplemented Némethy’s fragments with additional texts he had not included. These are marked with “b” or “c” after the fragment number. For Latin writers, I have retained the Latin names of the gods, while for Greek writers, they are given in Greek, as Euhemerus would have done. I concede that neither the original authors nor their translators were wholly consistent in this. Therefore, it can be helpful to note the major equivalences: Zeus = Jupiter, Kronos = Saturn, Caelus = Ouranos (Uranus), Poseidon = Neptune, Hades = Pluto, Hermes = Mercury, Ares = Mars, Hera = Juno, Demeter = Ceres, Athena = Minerva, Rhea = Ops. |
THE SACRED HISTORY OF EUHEMERUS
Introduction by Geyza Némethy
A Summary of the Sacred History
1. Preface.
The author sets out his teaching about the gods: he claims that the gods whom the nations worship were, among ancient peoples, once powerful men—kings and emperors (fragment 1).
2. Introduction.
A description of Panchaea (fragments 2–5). He explains how he came to believe this doctrine to be true: by order of King Cassander, he undertook great journeys and came to Arabia Felix (fr. II.1), which he describes in detail (fr. 3.41.2).
From there, sailing southward, he encountered several islands, of which three are especially memorable: the Sacred Island, where burial of the dead is forbidden, another island designated for tombs, and Panchaea itself (fr. 3.41.4; 42.3).
The Sacred Island abounds in frankincense and myrrh, which the inhabitants—the Panchaeans—sell in Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, and Egypt (fr. 3.41.4–6; 42.1–2).
Panchaea is inhabited by native Panchaeans and foreigners: Oceanites, Indians, Scythians, and Cretans. The original inhabitants, the Doi, were expelled by Ammon, who also destroyed their cities Doia and Asterusia (fr. 3.43.6–7). Notable cities include Panara (fr. 3.42.5), Hyracia, Dalis, and Oceanis (fr. 3.44.2). There is a sacred mountain called Caelum’s Seat or Triphyllian Olympus (fr. 3.44.5–7). The entire island is fertile and abundant in all crops (fr. 3.43).
The population is divided into three classes: priests, farmers, and soldiers (fr. III.44). The priests were originally Cretans, whom Jupiter brought to Panchaea when he founded a temple in his own honor, so they could oversee his worship (fr. 3.46.3–4).
In this temple of Triphyllian Zeus, a golden column was erected, on which were engraved in the sacred Egyptian script the deeds of Zeus, Ouranos, and Kronos (cf. fr. 23). Later, Hermes added the deeds of Apollo and Artemis.
3. About Uranus (fr. 6–8).
Starting from these sacred inscriptions, Euhemerus recounts the deeds of the gods. Ouranos was the first to hold supreme rule over the earth, together with his brothers (names not preserved) (fr. 7). Though his royal seat is not named in the fragments, it is likely that he dwelled in Panchaea, as he spent time on Mount Olympus there (fr. 3.44.6), and his son Kronos also reigned there. Zeus later erected an altar to him there (fr. 25). Ouranos was also the first to offer sacrifices to the celestial gods and derived his name from this (fr. 6).
Here, Euhemerus may have described the customs of ancient peoples and the origin of the human race. This is suggested by the Etymologicum Magnum, which reports that Euhemerus derived Brotōs (“mortal man”) from a primeval, earthborn figure named Brotus, considered by Euhemerus the first man.
Ouranos married Hestia and had children: Titan, Kronos, Rhea, and Demeter (fr. VI). He died in Oceania, a region of Panchaea, and was buried in Hyracia (fr. 8).
4. About Kronos.
After Ouranos’s death, Kronos became king. His older brother Titan allowed him to rule only on the condition that he would not raise any sons, hoping that the throne would revert to his own sons. But Kronos married Rhea, who secretly bore and hid their sons--Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades—while presenting the daughters (Hera and Glauca, who soon died) to him (fr. 11, 13). Zeus was raised on Crete, nourished by bees (fr. 12).
In Kronos’s time, human customs were still so savage that people even ate human flesh—until Zeus forbade this practice (fr. 14), perhaps as a rationalization of the myth that Kronos devoured his children.
Later, when Titan discovered that Kronos had secretly raised his sons, he and his own sons imprisoned Kronos and Rhea (fr. 15). Meanwhile, Zeus grew up, and an eagle landing on his head signified that he would become king (fr. 17). On hearing of his parents’ captivity, he went to Panchaea with his Cretan companions, defeated Titan, and then returned to Crete. Kronos was warned by an oracle to beware his own son. Fearing Zeus, he plotted against him—but Zeus, learning of this, made war on his father, set up camp on Mount Olympus (fr. XIX), and drove into exile Kronos, who fled to Italy (fr. 18–20).
5. Zeus, now ruling supreme, married Hera, Demeter, and Themis. From these unions came the Curetes, Persephone, and Athena respectively (fr. 21). He also fathered other children with other men’s wives—for example, with Aega, wife of Pan, he fathered Aegipan (fr. 22). In this way, Euhemerus surely told of Zeus’s many adulteries. A man who reduced Harmonia to a flute-player, Cadmus to a cook, and Aphrodite to a prostitute could hardly neglect such a licentious opportunity.
He gave control of the sea to Poseidon (fr. 23). Zeus himself journeyed around the earth with his army, arriving in Babylon, where he was hosted by Belus (fr. 24). There, he supposedly ordered a temple to be built in Bel’s name—explaining the Greek idea that Zeus was worshipped in Babylon under the name Belus.
From Babylon, Zeus went to Panchaea, where on Mount Caelum (Caeli Sella), he erected an altar to his grandfather Ouranos and sacrificed upon it (fr. 25). From this event, the Panchaeans began sacrificing there annually (fr. 2.43.7).
He next traveled to Syria, where he had a temple built in honor of his host, King Casios, both to preserve the memory of their friendship and to acquire divine honors. Thus temples were founded to Zeus Atabyrius, Labrandeus, Laprius, Molion, and others similarly. In Cilicia, he defeated Cilix, the local ruler, and elsewhere was universally worshipped as a god (fr. 26–27).
He dwelled for a long time on Olympus—in Panchaea—where he gave laws and judgments to mankind. Whoever invented anything new would go to him to present it (fr. 28). We read that Aeacus discovered gold-smithing and metallurgy in Panchaea (fr. 45).
After circling the earth five times, Zeus left laws, prepared grain, and did many good deeds for humanity. He died in Crete, and his tomb is shown in Knossos (fr. 29).
6. But let us pause here, for we cannot follow the continuous thread of the narrative much further. Though it is certain that a large part of the work involved interpreting the sacred inscription in the temple of Triphyllian Zeus—see Diodorus 5.46 (fr. 3): “through which the deeds of Ouranos and Zeus were recorded, and afterward those of Artemis and Apollo by Hermes”—we may conjecture that the deeds of Apollo and Artemis were recounted after Jupiter’s death. Yet this remains unclear.
We know only Minucius Felix (Oct. 21) mentions that Euhemerus also showed the tomb of Apollo of Delphi. About Artemis, no other testimony survives. Still, Diodorus’ words and the fact that Athenaeus XIV (fr. 40) quotes book 3 of Euhemerus when speaking of Cadmus and Harmonia support the idea—proposed by Boettiger—that:
So, at least three books were written; whether there were more is unknown.
7. The position of the fragments about Athena and Aphrodite is uncertain.
Hyginus reports (fr. 30) that, according to Euhemerus, Minerva (Athena) killed the Gorgon. Festus cites the proverb “Sus Minervam,” which Varro and Euhemerus wrapped in a ridiculous myth—but the myth itself is lost (fr. 31).
The account of Aphrodite is more complete (fr. 32–39). We read that Aphrodite discovered the course of the stars—a myth likely invented to explain the epithet Urania. We know how clever Euhemerus was at twisting gods’ epithets to support his theory (fr. 22–27). He seems to have invented or distorted many myths to match divine epithets. He claimed that Aphrodite was a prostitute on Cyprus, who led women to engage in sex work. After her death, Cinyras consecrated her and founded mysteries in which initiates paid her a coin—as to a courtesan. This suits her lesser epithet Porne (i.e., “prostitute”), under which she was worshipped at Abydus as well as Pandemos.
The position of the Demeter and Persephone myth (fr. 46) is unknown. The myth of Cretan Dionysus (fr. XLVIII) likely followed Zeus’s story, while the story of Theban Dionysus and his conflict with Lycurgus (fr. 49) may have appeared near the account of Cadmus (fr. 40).
The fragment about Atlas (fr. 42) is also without context but suggests that some divine myths were invented purely to explain proverbs (cf. fr. 21).
8. Euhemerus also touched on foreign religions beyond the Greek world.
Minucius Felix (Oct. 21) writes that he “enumerates their births, homelands, tombs, and shows them throughout the provinces.” In the book on Jupiter’s deeds, he told of Babylonia (fr. XXIV), Syria, Cilicia (fr. 26), and Caria (fr. 27).
He also described Egypt, probably in a different section—telling of Isis, Ammon (whose deeds were mentioned in §2), other Egyptian gods, and the pyramids, which he interpreted as tombs of consecrated kings (fr. 44). He likely also discussed Phoenicia, as he cites the testimony of the Sidonians (fr. 40), and may have referenced Judea, which led Josephus to name Euhemerus as a valuable witness of Jewish antiquity.
9. These are, as far as can be reconstructed from the few fragments of Sacred History, the contents of the whole work.
It is clear that Euhemerus did not simply collect myths, but composed a coherent narrative from beginning to end about the gods of nearly every people known to the Greeks. He began with well-known Greek myths, rationalized them as human history, and adapted local traditions to his theory—like those from Crete about Zeus’s childhood and tomb. He also drew on rituals and mystery cults (like those of Aphrodite in Cyprus), which helped bolster his argument. He was especially skilled at explaining divine names and proverbs in human terms—always working to blend truth with fiction so that his fabrications might seem more credible. And judging by the many followers and imitators of his doctrine in antiquity, he appears to have succeeded at least in part.
The author sets out his teaching about the gods: he claims that the gods whom the nations worship were, among ancient peoples, once powerful men—kings and emperors (fragment 1).
2. Introduction.
A description of Panchaea (fragments 2–5). He explains how he came to believe this doctrine to be true: by order of King Cassander, he undertook great journeys and came to Arabia Felix (fr. II.1), which he describes in detail (fr. 3.41.2).
From there, sailing southward, he encountered several islands, of which three are especially memorable: the Sacred Island, where burial of the dead is forbidden, another island designated for tombs, and Panchaea itself (fr. 3.41.4; 42.3).
The Sacred Island abounds in frankincense and myrrh, which the inhabitants—the Panchaeans—sell in Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, and Egypt (fr. 3.41.4–6; 42.1–2).
Panchaea is inhabited by native Panchaeans and foreigners: Oceanites, Indians, Scythians, and Cretans. The original inhabitants, the Doi, were expelled by Ammon, who also destroyed their cities Doia and Asterusia (fr. 3.43.6–7). Notable cities include Panara (fr. 3.42.5), Hyracia, Dalis, and Oceanis (fr. 3.44.2). There is a sacred mountain called Caelum’s Seat or Triphyllian Olympus (fr. 3.44.5–7). The entire island is fertile and abundant in all crops (fr. 3.43).
The population is divided into three classes: priests, farmers, and soldiers (fr. III.44). The priests were originally Cretans, whom Jupiter brought to Panchaea when he founded a temple in his own honor, so they could oversee his worship (fr. 3.46.3–4).
In this temple of Triphyllian Zeus, a golden column was erected, on which were engraved in the sacred Egyptian script the deeds of Zeus, Ouranos, and Kronos (cf. fr. 23). Later, Hermes added the deeds of Apollo and Artemis.
3. About Uranus (fr. 6–8).
Starting from these sacred inscriptions, Euhemerus recounts the deeds of the gods. Ouranos was the first to hold supreme rule over the earth, together with his brothers (names not preserved) (fr. 7). Though his royal seat is not named in the fragments, it is likely that he dwelled in Panchaea, as he spent time on Mount Olympus there (fr. 3.44.6), and his son Kronos also reigned there. Zeus later erected an altar to him there (fr. 25). Ouranos was also the first to offer sacrifices to the celestial gods and derived his name from this (fr. 6).
Here, Euhemerus may have described the customs of ancient peoples and the origin of the human race. This is suggested by the Etymologicum Magnum, which reports that Euhemerus derived Brotōs (“mortal man”) from a primeval, earthborn figure named Brotus, considered by Euhemerus the first man.
Ouranos married Hestia and had children: Titan, Kronos, Rhea, and Demeter (fr. VI). He died in Oceania, a region of Panchaea, and was buried in Hyracia (fr. 8).
4. About Kronos.
After Ouranos’s death, Kronos became king. His older brother Titan allowed him to rule only on the condition that he would not raise any sons, hoping that the throne would revert to his own sons. But Kronos married Rhea, who secretly bore and hid their sons--Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades—while presenting the daughters (Hera and Glauca, who soon died) to him (fr. 11, 13). Zeus was raised on Crete, nourished by bees (fr. 12).
In Kronos’s time, human customs were still so savage that people even ate human flesh—until Zeus forbade this practice (fr. 14), perhaps as a rationalization of the myth that Kronos devoured his children.
Later, when Titan discovered that Kronos had secretly raised his sons, he and his own sons imprisoned Kronos and Rhea (fr. 15). Meanwhile, Zeus grew up, and an eagle landing on his head signified that he would become king (fr. 17). On hearing of his parents’ captivity, he went to Panchaea with his Cretan companions, defeated Titan, and then returned to Crete. Kronos was warned by an oracle to beware his own son. Fearing Zeus, he plotted against him—but Zeus, learning of this, made war on his father, set up camp on Mount Olympus (fr. XIX), and drove into exile Kronos, who fled to Italy (fr. 18–20).
5. Zeus, now ruling supreme, married Hera, Demeter, and Themis. From these unions came the Curetes, Persephone, and Athena respectively (fr. 21). He also fathered other children with other men’s wives—for example, with Aega, wife of Pan, he fathered Aegipan (fr. 22). In this way, Euhemerus surely told of Zeus’s many adulteries. A man who reduced Harmonia to a flute-player, Cadmus to a cook, and Aphrodite to a prostitute could hardly neglect such a licentious opportunity.
He gave control of the sea to Poseidon (fr. 23). Zeus himself journeyed around the earth with his army, arriving in Babylon, where he was hosted by Belus (fr. 24). There, he supposedly ordered a temple to be built in Bel’s name—explaining the Greek idea that Zeus was worshipped in Babylon under the name Belus.
From Babylon, Zeus went to Panchaea, where on Mount Caelum (Caeli Sella), he erected an altar to his grandfather Ouranos and sacrificed upon it (fr. 25). From this event, the Panchaeans began sacrificing there annually (fr. 2.43.7).
He next traveled to Syria, where he had a temple built in honor of his host, King Casios, both to preserve the memory of their friendship and to acquire divine honors. Thus temples were founded to Zeus Atabyrius, Labrandeus, Laprius, Molion, and others similarly. In Cilicia, he defeated Cilix, the local ruler, and elsewhere was universally worshipped as a god (fr. 26–27).
He dwelled for a long time on Olympus—in Panchaea—where he gave laws and judgments to mankind. Whoever invented anything new would go to him to present it (fr. 28). We read that Aeacus discovered gold-smithing and metallurgy in Panchaea (fr. 45).
After circling the earth five times, Zeus left laws, prepared grain, and did many good deeds for humanity. He died in Crete, and his tomb is shown in Knossos (fr. 29).
6. But let us pause here, for we cannot follow the continuous thread of the narrative much further. Though it is certain that a large part of the work involved interpreting the sacred inscription in the temple of Triphyllian Zeus—see Diodorus 5.46 (fr. 3): “through which the deeds of Ouranos and Zeus were recorded, and afterward those of Artemis and Apollo by Hermes”—we may conjecture that the deeds of Apollo and Artemis were recounted after Jupiter’s death. Yet this remains unclear.
We know only Minucius Felix (Oct. 21) mentions that Euhemerus also showed the tomb of Apollo of Delphi. About Artemis, no other testimony survives. Still, Diodorus’ words and the fact that Athenaeus XIV (fr. 40) quotes book 3 of Euhemerus when speaking of Cadmus and Harmonia support the idea—proposed by Boettiger—that:
- Book I contained the deeds of Ouranos, Kronos, and Zeus;
- Book II, those of Apollo and Artemis;
- Book III, myths about Cadmus, his grandson Dionysus, and other heroes.
So, at least three books were written; whether there were more is unknown.
7. The position of the fragments about Athena and Aphrodite is uncertain.
Hyginus reports (fr. 30) that, according to Euhemerus, Minerva (Athena) killed the Gorgon. Festus cites the proverb “Sus Minervam,” which Varro and Euhemerus wrapped in a ridiculous myth—but the myth itself is lost (fr. 31).
The account of Aphrodite is more complete (fr. 32–39). We read that Aphrodite discovered the course of the stars—a myth likely invented to explain the epithet Urania. We know how clever Euhemerus was at twisting gods’ epithets to support his theory (fr. 22–27). He seems to have invented or distorted many myths to match divine epithets. He claimed that Aphrodite was a prostitute on Cyprus, who led women to engage in sex work. After her death, Cinyras consecrated her and founded mysteries in which initiates paid her a coin—as to a courtesan. This suits her lesser epithet Porne (i.e., “prostitute”), under which she was worshipped at Abydus as well as Pandemos.
The position of the Demeter and Persephone myth (fr. 46) is unknown. The myth of Cretan Dionysus (fr. XLVIII) likely followed Zeus’s story, while the story of Theban Dionysus and his conflict with Lycurgus (fr. 49) may have appeared near the account of Cadmus (fr. 40).
The fragment about Atlas (fr. 42) is also without context but suggests that some divine myths were invented purely to explain proverbs (cf. fr. 21).
8. Euhemerus also touched on foreign religions beyond the Greek world.
Minucius Felix (Oct. 21) writes that he “enumerates their births, homelands, tombs, and shows them throughout the provinces.” In the book on Jupiter’s deeds, he told of Babylonia (fr. XXIV), Syria, Cilicia (fr. 26), and Caria (fr. 27).
He also described Egypt, probably in a different section—telling of Isis, Ammon (whose deeds were mentioned in §2), other Egyptian gods, and the pyramids, which he interpreted as tombs of consecrated kings (fr. 44). He likely also discussed Phoenicia, as he cites the testimony of the Sidonians (fr. 40), and may have referenced Judea, which led Josephus to name Euhemerus as a valuable witness of Jewish antiquity.
9. These are, as far as can be reconstructed from the few fragments of Sacred History, the contents of the whole work.
It is clear that Euhemerus did not simply collect myths, but composed a coherent narrative from beginning to end about the gods of nearly every people known to the Greeks. He began with well-known Greek myths, rationalized them as human history, and adapted local traditions to his theory—like those from Crete about Zeus’s childhood and tomb. He also drew on rituals and mystery cults (like those of Aphrodite in Cyprus), which helped bolster his argument. He was especially skilled at explaining divine names and proverbs in human terms—always working to blend truth with fiction so that his fabrications might seem more credible. And judging by the many followers and imitators of his doctrine in antiquity, he appears to have succeeded at least in part.
EUHEMERUS
I.
TESTIMONIES OF THE ANCIENTS
1. Callimachus in Pseudo-Plutarch, De placitis philosophorum 1.7
(trans. William W. Goodwin [ed.])
Callimachus the Cyrenean discovered his mind touching Euhemerus in these Iambic verses, thus writing:
To th’ ante-mural temple flock apace,
Where he that long ago composed of brass
Great Jupiter,* Thrasonic old bald pate,
Now writes his impious** books,—a boastful ass!
meaning books which denote there are no Gods.
* The original Greek gives “Zeus” rather than Jupiter, but it doesn’t fit Goodwin’s meter.
** An older papyrus fragment of Callimachus reads “nonsensical” instead of “impious.”
2. Cicero, De natura deorum 1.42
(trans. Francis Brooks)
Are not those, moreover, without a vestige of it who tell us that brave, or famous, or powerful men attained after death to the rank of gods, and that it is these very men whom we are accustomed to worship, and pray to, and venerate? This theory was made most use of by Euhemerus, and his chief expounder and follower has been our own countryman Ennius. Now when Euhemerus proves the death and burial of the gods, does he seem to have established religion, or to have absolutely and wholly done away with it?
3. Strabo, Geography 1.3, repudiating Eratosthenes’ use of Damastes works.
(trans. H. L. Jones)
But to use Damastes as an authority is no whit better than to cite as authorities the “Bergaean” — or rather the Messenian — Euhemerus and the other writers whom Eratosthenes himself cites, in order to ridicule their absurdities.
4. Strabo, Geography 2.4, on what Polybius says.
(trans. H. L. Jones)
Now Polybius says that, in the first place, it is incredible that a private individual — and a poor man too — could have travelled such distances by sea and by land; and that, though Eratosthenes was wholly at a loss whether he should believe these stories, nevertheless he has believed Pytheas’ account of Britain, and the regions about Gades, and of Iberia; but he says it is far better to believe Euhemerus, the Messenian, than Pytheas. Euhemerus, at all events, asserts that he sailed only to one country, Panchaea, whereas Pytheas asserts that he explored in person the whole northern region of Europe as far as the ends of the world — an assertion which no man would believe, not even if Hermes made it. And as for Eratosthenes — adds Poseidonius — though he calls Euhemerus a Bergaean, he believes Pytheas, and that, too, though not even Dicaearchus believed him.
5. Strabo, Geography 2.3, repudiating Poseidonius.
(trans. H. L. Jones)
Now, really, all this does not fall short of the fabrications of Pytheas, Euhemerus and Antiphanes. Those men, however, we can pardon for their fabrications — since they follow precisely this as their business — just as we pardon jugglers; but who could pardon Poseidonius, master of demonstration and philosopher, whom we may almost call the claimant for first honours. So much, at least, is not well done by Poseidonius.
6. Strabo, Geography 7.3, on the names of fictitious places.
(trans. H. L. Jones)
From these men he [Apollodorus] proceeds against the historians who speak of the “Rhipaean Mountains,” and of “Mt. Ogyium,” and of the settlement of the Gorgons and Hesperides, and of the “Land of Meropis” in Theopompus, and the “City of Cimmeris” in Hecataeus, and the “Land of Panchaea” in Euhemerus, and in Aristotle “the river-stones, which are formed of sand but are melted by the rains.”
7. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 23
(trans. Frank Cole Babbitt)
I hesitate, lest this be the moving of things immovable and not only "warring against the long years of time," as Simonides has it, but warring, too, against "many a nation and race of men" who are possessed by a feeling of piety towards these gods, and thus we should not stop short of transplanting such names from the heavens to the earth, and eliminating and dissipating the reverence and faith implanted in nearly all mankind at birth, opening wide the great doors to the godless throng, degrading things divine to the human level, and giving a splendid licence to the deceitful utterances of Euhemerus of Messenê, who of himself drew up copies of an incredible and non-existent mythology, and spread atheism over the whole inhabited earth by obliterating the gods of our belief and converting them all alike into names of generals, admirals, and kings, who, forsooth, lived in very ancient times and are recorded bin inscriptions written in golden letters at Panchon, which no foreigner and no Greek had ever happened to meet with, save only Euhemerus. He, it seems, made a voyage to the Panchoans and Triphyllians, who never existed anywhere on earth and do not exist!
8. Callimachus in Pseudo-Plutarch, De placitis philosophorum 1.7
(trans. William W. Goodwin [ed.])
Some of the philosophers, such as Diagoras the Melian, Theodorus the Cyrenean, and Euhemerus the Tegeatan, did unanimously deny there were any Gods.
(Callimachus’s fragment, number 1 above, immediately follows. These words are also excerpted in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 14.16.)
9. Minucius Felix, Octavius ch. 21
(trans. Robert Ernest Wallis)
Read the writings of the Stoics, or the writings of wise men, you will acknowledge these facts with me. On account of the merits of their virtue or of some gift, Euhemerus asserts that they were esteemed gods; and he enumerates their birthdays, their countries, their places of sepulture, and throughout various provinces points out these circumstances of the Dictæan Jupiter, and of the Delphic Apollo, and of the Pharian Isis, and of the Eleusinian Ceres.
10. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 9.50
(translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence)
Among those who have speculated about the existence of the gods, some say that there is no god — for example, Diagoras of Melos, Prodicus of Ceos, Theodorus, and many others. Of these, Euhemerus claimed that the gods who are commonly believed in were originally powerful human beings who, because of this, were deified by others and came to be thought of as gods.
11. Pseudo-Galen, On the History of Philosophy ch. 35
(translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence)
What we previously left unsaid at the beginning concerning God, we will now speak about. We would find that some of the earlier philosophers were ignorant of the gods — such as Diagoras of Melos, Theodorus the Cyrenaic, and Euhemerus of Tegea — for they dared to say that the gods do not exist.
12. Aelian, Various Histories 2.31
(trans. Thomas Stanley, adapted)
And who extolls not the wisdom of the barbarians, since none of them have fallen into any atheism, or question whether there are gods or not, and whether they take care of us or not? None of them ever held such opinions as Euhemerus the Messenian, or Diogenes the Phrygian or Hippo, or Diagoras, or Sosias, or Epicurus; not any Indian, Celt, or Ægyptian.
13. Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks ch. 2.
(trans. G. W. Butterworth)
All this—for I must not in the least conceal what I think—makes me amazed how the term atheist has been applied to Euhemerus of Acragas, Nicanor of Cyprus, Diagoras and Hippo of Melos, with that Cyrenian named Theodorus and a good many others besides, men who lived sensible lives and discerned more acutely, I imagine, than the rest of mankind the error connected with these gods.
14. Arnobius, Against the Heathen 4.29
(trans. Hamilton Bryce and Hugh Campbell)
And here, indeed, we can show that all those whom you represent to us as and call gods, were but men, by quoting either Euhemerus of Acragas, whose books were translated by Ennius into Latin that all might be thoroughly acquainted with them; or Nicanor the Cyprian; or the Pellaean Leon; or Theodorus of Cyrene; or Hippo and Diagoras of Melos; or a thousand other writers, who have minutely, industriously, and carefully brought secret things to light with noble candour. We may, I repeat, at pleasure, declare both the acts of Jupiter, and the wars of Minerva and the virgin Diana; by what stratagems Liber strove to make himself master of the Indian empire; what was the condition, the duty, the gain of Venus; to whom the great mother was bound in marriage; what hope, what joy was aroused in her by the comely Attis; whence came the Egyptian Serapis and Isis, or for what reasons their very names were formed.
15. Lactantius, On the Anger of God ch. 11
(trans. William Fletcher)
Without doubt, all those who are worshipped as gods were men, and were also the earliest and greatest kings; but who is ignorant that they were invested with divine honours after death, either on account of the virtue by which they had profited the race of men, or that they obtained immortal memory on account of the benefits and inventions by which they had adorned human life? And not only men, but women also. And this, both the most ancient writers of Greece, whom they call theologi; and also Roman writers following and imitating the Greeks, teach; of whom especially Euhemerus and our Ennius, who point out the birthdays, marriages, offspring, governments, exploits, deaths, and tombs of all of them.
16a. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 2.2
(trans. E. H. Gifford)
So Diodorus writes in the third volume of his histories [see: Diodorus 3.59]: and in the sixth, the same author confirms the same theology from the writings of Euhemerus the Messenian, speaking word for word as follows: “With regard then to gods the men of old have handed down to their posterity two sets of notions. For some, say they, are eternal and imperishable, as the Sun and Moon and the other heavenly bodies, and besides these the winds, and the rest who partake of the like nature with them; for each of these has an eternal origin and eternal continuance. Other deities they say were of the earth; but, because of the benefits which they conferred on mankind, they have received immortal honour and glory, as Heracles, Dionysus, Aristaeus, and the others like them. Concerning the terrestrial gods many various tales have been handed down in the historical and mythological writers. Among the historians Euhemerus, the author of the Sacred Record, has written a special history; and of the mythologists Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and such others as these, have invented very marvellous myths concerning the gods: and we shall endeavour to run over what both classes have recorded concisely and with a view to due proportion.”
16b. John Malalas, Chronicle 2
(trans. Jason Colavito)
(The same passage Eusebius quotes in 16a is cited in précis, probably from Eusebius, by John Malalas.)
Concerning those (i.e., the gods) about whom Diodorus the wisest also speaks in his writings, [he says] that the gods were in fact humans—people whom other humans, believing them to be immortal because of their benefactions, called gods. And some of them even acquired cultic titles and ruled over countries.
17. Augustine, City of God 6.7
(trans. Marcus Dods)
What was thought of Jupiter himself by those who placed his wet nurse in the Capitol? Did they not bear witness to Euhemerus, who, not with the garrulity of a fable-teller, but with the gravity of an historian who had diligently investigated the matter, wrote that all such gods had been men and mortals?
18. Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels 1.23
(trans. S. D. F. Salmond)
But was that Euhemerus also a poet, who declares both Jupiter himself, and his father Saturn, and Pluto and Neptune his brothers, to have been men, in terms so exceedingly plain that their worshippers ought all the more to render thanks to the poets, because their inventions have not been intended so much to disparage them as rather to dress them up?
19. Theophilus, To Autolycus 3.5
(trans. Marcus Dods)
And to speak of the opinions of the most atheistical, Euhemerus, is superfluous. For having made many daring assertions concerning the gods, he at last would absolutely deny their existence, and have all things to be governed by self-regulated action.
20. Theophilus, To Autolycus 3.5
(trans. Marcus Dods)
Which of them, then, shall we believe? Philemon, the comic poet, who says — “Good hope have they who praise and serve the gods;” or those whom we have mentioned — Euhemerus, and Epicurus, and Pythagoras, and the others who deny that the gods are to be worshipped, and who abolish providence?
21. Theodoretus, Graecarum affectionum curatio, p. 758. ed. Schulze.
(translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence)
One must read not only the teachings of the holy apostles but also the oracles of the divine prophets. For in this way, seeing the harmony between the old and new theology, one will marvel at the truth and will flee from the atheism of Diagoras of Miletus, Theodore of Cyrene, and Euhemerus of Tegea; for Plutarch said that these men believed in no god.
22. Theodoretus, Graecarum affectionum curatio, p. 760. ed. Schulze.
(translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence)
Therefore, not only Diagoras of Miletus, Theodore of Cyrene, Euhemerus of Tegea, and those who followed them, who outright declared, as Plutarch said, that there are no gods, are atheists; but also Homer, Hesiod, and the schools of philosophers, who, while narrating countless strings of myths about gods, portrayed some as base and enslaved to human passions.
(trans. William W. Goodwin [ed.])
Callimachus the Cyrenean discovered his mind touching Euhemerus in these Iambic verses, thus writing:
To th’ ante-mural temple flock apace,
Where he that long ago composed of brass
Great Jupiter,* Thrasonic old bald pate,
Now writes his impious** books,—a boastful ass!
meaning books which denote there are no Gods.
* The original Greek gives “Zeus” rather than Jupiter, but it doesn’t fit Goodwin’s meter.
** An older papyrus fragment of Callimachus reads “nonsensical” instead of “impious.”
2. Cicero, De natura deorum 1.42
(trans. Francis Brooks)
Are not those, moreover, without a vestige of it who tell us that brave, or famous, or powerful men attained after death to the rank of gods, and that it is these very men whom we are accustomed to worship, and pray to, and venerate? This theory was made most use of by Euhemerus, and his chief expounder and follower has been our own countryman Ennius. Now when Euhemerus proves the death and burial of the gods, does he seem to have established religion, or to have absolutely and wholly done away with it?
3. Strabo, Geography 1.3, repudiating Eratosthenes’ use of Damastes works.
(trans. H. L. Jones)
But to use Damastes as an authority is no whit better than to cite as authorities the “Bergaean” — or rather the Messenian — Euhemerus and the other writers whom Eratosthenes himself cites, in order to ridicule their absurdities.
4. Strabo, Geography 2.4, on what Polybius says.
(trans. H. L. Jones)
Now Polybius says that, in the first place, it is incredible that a private individual — and a poor man too — could have travelled such distances by sea and by land; and that, though Eratosthenes was wholly at a loss whether he should believe these stories, nevertheless he has believed Pytheas’ account of Britain, and the regions about Gades, and of Iberia; but he says it is far better to believe Euhemerus, the Messenian, than Pytheas. Euhemerus, at all events, asserts that he sailed only to one country, Panchaea, whereas Pytheas asserts that he explored in person the whole northern region of Europe as far as the ends of the world — an assertion which no man would believe, not even if Hermes made it. And as for Eratosthenes — adds Poseidonius — though he calls Euhemerus a Bergaean, he believes Pytheas, and that, too, though not even Dicaearchus believed him.
5. Strabo, Geography 2.3, repudiating Poseidonius.
(trans. H. L. Jones)
Now, really, all this does not fall short of the fabrications of Pytheas, Euhemerus and Antiphanes. Those men, however, we can pardon for their fabrications — since they follow precisely this as their business — just as we pardon jugglers; but who could pardon Poseidonius, master of demonstration and philosopher, whom we may almost call the claimant for first honours. So much, at least, is not well done by Poseidonius.
6. Strabo, Geography 7.3, on the names of fictitious places.
(trans. H. L. Jones)
From these men he [Apollodorus] proceeds against the historians who speak of the “Rhipaean Mountains,” and of “Mt. Ogyium,” and of the settlement of the Gorgons and Hesperides, and of the “Land of Meropis” in Theopompus, and the “City of Cimmeris” in Hecataeus, and the “Land of Panchaea” in Euhemerus, and in Aristotle “the river-stones, which are formed of sand but are melted by the rains.”
7. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 23
(trans. Frank Cole Babbitt)
I hesitate, lest this be the moving of things immovable and not only "warring against the long years of time," as Simonides has it, but warring, too, against "many a nation and race of men" who are possessed by a feeling of piety towards these gods, and thus we should not stop short of transplanting such names from the heavens to the earth, and eliminating and dissipating the reverence and faith implanted in nearly all mankind at birth, opening wide the great doors to the godless throng, degrading things divine to the human level, and giving a splendid licence to the deceitful utterances of Euhemerus of Messenê, who of himself drew up copies of an incredible and non-existent mythology, and spread atheism over the whole inhabited earth by obliterating the gods of our belief and converting them all alike into names of generals, admirals, and kings, who, forsooth, lived in very ancient times and are recorded bin inscriptions written in golden letters at Panchon, which no foreigner and no Greek had ever happened to meet with, save only Euhemerus. He, it seems, made a voyage to the Panchoans and Triphyllians, who never existed anywhere on earth and do not exist!
8. Callimachus in Pseudo-Plutarch, De placitis philosophorum 1.7
(trans. William W. Goodwin [ed.])
Some of the philosophers, such as Diagoras the Melian, Theodorus the Cyrenean, and Euhemerus the Tegeatan, did unanimously deny there were any Gods.
(Callimachus’s fragment, number 1 above, immediately follows. These words are also excerpted in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 14.16.)
9. Minucius Felix, Octavius ch. 21
(trans. Robert Ernest Wallis)
Read the writings of the Stoics, or the writings of wise men, you will acknowledge these facts with me. On account of the merits of their virtue or of some gift, Euhemerus asserts that they were esteemed gods; and he enumerates their birthdays, their countries, their places of sepulture, and throughout various provinces points out these circumstances of the Dictæan Jupiter, and of the Delphic Apollo, and of the Pharian Isis, and of the Eleusinian Ceres.
10. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 9.50
(translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence)
Among those who have speculated about the existence of the gods, some say that there is no god — for example, Diagoras of Melos, Prodicus of Ceos, Theodorus, and many others. Of these, Euhemerus claimed that the gods who are commonly believed in were originally powerful human beings who, because of this, were deified by others and came to be thought of as gods.
11. Pseudo-Galen, On the History of Philosophy ch. 35
(translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence)
What we previously left unsaid at the beginning concerning God, we will now speak about. We would find that some of the earlier philosophers were ignorant of the gods — such as Diagoras of Melos, Theodorus the Cyrenaic, and Euhemerus of Tegea — for they dared to say that the gods do not exist.
12. Aelian, Various Histories 2.31
(trans. Thomas Stanley, adapted)
And who extolls not the wisdom of the barbarians, since none of them have fallen into any atheism, or question whether there are gods or not, and whether they take care of us or not? None of them ever held such opinions as Euhemerus the Messenian, or Diogenes the Phrygian or Hippo, or Diagoras, or Sosias, or Epicurus; not any Indian, Celt, or Ægyptian.
13. Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks ch. 2.
(trans. G. W. Butterworth)
All this—for I must not in the least conceal what I think—makes me amazed how the term atheist has been applied to Euhemerus of Acragas, Nicanor of Cyprus, Diagoras and Hippo of Melos, with that Cyrenian named Theodorus and a good many others besides, men who lived sensible lives and discerned more acutely, I imagine, than the rest of mankind the error connected with these gods.
14. Arnobius, Against the Heathen 4.29
(trans. Hamilton Bryce and Hugh Campbell)
And here, indeed, we can show that all those whom you represent to us as and call gods, were but men, by quoting either Euhemerus of Acragas, whose books were translated by Ennius into Latin that all might be thoroughly acquainted with them; or Nicanor the Cyprian; or the Pellaean Leon; or Theodorus of Cyrene; or Hippo and Diagoras of Melos; or a thousand other writers, who have minutely, industriously, and carefully brought secret things to light with noble candour. We may, I repeat, at pleasure, declare both the acts of Jupiter, and the wars of Minerva and the virgin Diana; by what stratagems Liber strove to make himself master of the Indian empire; what was the condition, the duty, the gain of Venus; to whom the great mother was bound in marriage; what hope, what joy was aroused in her by the comely Attis; whence came the Egyptian Serapis and Isis, or for what reasons their very names were formed.
15. Lactantius, On the Anger of God ch. 11
(trans. William Fletcher)
Without doubt, all those who are worshipped as gods were men, and were also the earliest and greatest kings; but who is ignorant that they were invested with divine honours after death, either on account of the virtue by which they had profited the race of men, or that they obtained immortal memory on account of the benefits and inventions by which they had adorned human life? And not only men, but women also. And this, both the most ancient writers of Greece, whom they call theologi; and also Roman writers following and imitating the Greeks, teach; of whom especially Euhemerus and our Ennius, who point out the birthdays, marriages, offspring, governments, exploits, deaths, and tombs of all of them.
16a. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 2.2
(trans. E. H. Gifford)
So Diodorus writes in the third volume of his histories [see: Diodorus 3.59]: and in the sixth, the same author confirms the same theology from the writings of Euhemerus the Messenian, speaking word for word as follows: “With regard then to gods the men of old have handed down to their posterity two sets of notions. For some, say they, are eternal and imperishable, as the Sun and Moon and the other heavenly bodies, and besides these the winds, and the rest who partake of the like nature with them; for each of these has an eternal origin and eternal continuance. Other deities they say were of the earth; but, because of the benefits which they conferred on mankind, they have received immortal honour and glory, as Heracles, Dionysus, Aristaeus, and the others like them. Concerning the terrestrial gods many various tales have been handed down in the historical and mythological writers. Among the historians Euhemerus, the author of the Sacred Record, has written a special history; and of the mythologists Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and such others as these, have invented very marvellous myths concerning the gods: and we shall endeavour to run over what both classes have recorded concisely and with a view to due proportion.”
16b. John Malalas, Chronicle 2
(trans. Jason Colavito)
(The same passage Eusebius quotes in 16a is cited in précis, probably from Eusebius, by John Malalas.)
Concerning those (i.e., the gods) about whom Diodorus the wisest also speaks in his writings, [he says] that the gods were in fact humans—people whom other humans, believing them to be immortal because of their benefactions, called gods. And some of them even acquired cultic titles and ruled over countries.
17. Augustine, City of God 6.7
(trans. Marcus Dods)
What was thought of Jupiter himself by those who placed his wet nurse in the Capitol? Did they not bear witness to Euhemerus, who, not with the garrulity of a fable-teller, but with the gravity of an historian who had diligently investigated the matter, wrote that all such gods had been men and mortals?
18. Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels 1.23
(trans. S. D. F. Salmond)
But was that Euhemerus also a poet, who declares both Jupiter himself, and his father Saturn, and Pluto and Neptune his brothers, to have been men, in terms so exceedingly plain that their worshippers ought all the more to render thanks to the poets, because their inventions have not been intended so much to disparage them as rather to dress them up?
19. Theophilus, To Autolycus 3.5
(trans. Marcus Dods)
And to speak of the opinions of the most atheistical, Euhemerus, is superfluous. For having made many daring assertions concerning the gods, he at last would absolutely deny their existence, and have all things to be governed by self-regulated action.
20. Theophilus, To Autolycus 3.5
(trans. Marcus Dods)
Which of them, then, shall we believe? Philemon, the comic poet, who says — “Good hope have they who praise and serve the gods;” or those whom we have mentioned — Euhemerus, and Epicurus, and Pythagoras, and the others who deny that the gods are to be worshipped, and who abolish providence?
21. Theodoretus, Graecarum affectionum curatio, p. 758. ed. Schulze.
(translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence)
One must read not only the teachings of the holy apostles but also the oracles of the divine prophets. For in this way, seeing the harmony between the old and new theology, one will marvel at the truth and will flee from the atheism of Diagoras of Miletus, Theodore of Cyrene, and Euhemerus of Tegea; for Plutarch said that these men believed in no god.
22. Theodoretus, Graecarum affectionum curatio, p. 760. ed. Schulze.
(translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence)
Therefore, not only Diagoras of Miletus, Theodore of Cyrene, Euhemerus of Tegea, and those who followed them, who outright declared, as Plutarch said, that there are no gods, are atheists; but also Homer, Hesiod, and the schools of philosophers, who, while narrating countless strings of myths about gods, portrayed some as base and enslaved to human passions.
II.
FRAGMENTS OF THE SACRED HISTORY
PREFACE
1. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 9.17
(translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence.)
Euhemerus, who was called an atheist, says: “When the life of human beings was disordered, those who surpassed the rest in strength and intelligence, so that all lived according to their commands, eager to attain greater admiration and reverence, fashioned around themselves a certain exaggerated and divine power, from which they came to be regarded as gods by the multitude.”
(translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence.)
Euhemerus, who was called an atheist, says: “When the life of human beings was disordered, those who surpassed the rest in strength and intelligence, so that all lived according to their commands, eager to attain greater admiration and reverence, fashioned around themselves a certain exaggerated and divine power, from which they came to be regarded as gods by the multitude.”
THE DESCRIPTION OF PANCHAEA
2. Diodorus Siculus, Book 6, preserved in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 2.2
(trans. E. H. Gifford)
55 Euemerus, then, was a friend of King Cassander and, having boon constrained for his sake to perform some important services for the king, and some long journeys, says that he was carried away southwards into the ocean; for, having started on his voyage from Arabia Felix, he sailed many days across the ocean, and landed on some oceanic islands, one of which is that called Panchaea, in which he saw the Panchaean inhabitants, who were eminent in piety, and honoured the gods with most magnificent sacrifices and notable offerings of silver and gold.
56 The island also was sacred to the gods; and there were many other things to be admired both for their antiquity, and for the ingenuity of their manufacture, the particulars concerning which we have recorded in the books preceding this.
57 Also therein on a certain exceedingly high hill is a temple of Zeus Triphylius, erected by himself at the time when he reigned over the whole inhabited world, being still among men. In this temple there is a golden pillar, on which is inscribed in the Panchaean language a summary of the acts of Uranus, Kronos, and Zeus.
58 After this he says that Uranus was the first king, a gentle and benevolent man, and learned in the motion of the stars, who also was the first to honour the celestial deities with sacrifices, on which account he was called Uranus.
59 By his wife Ilestia he had sons Pan and Kronos, and daughters Rhea and Demeter: and after Uranus, Kronos became king and, having married Rhea, begat Zeus and Hera and Poseidon.
3a. Diodorus Siculus, Library 5.42-46
(trans. G. Booth)
42 … There are many things observable in Panchaea, that deserve to be taken notice of. The natural inhabitants are those they call Panchaei; the strangers that dwell among them are people of the western parts, together with Indians, Cretans, and Scythians. In this island there is a famous city, called Panara, not inferior to any for wealth and grandeur. The citizens are called the suppliants of Jupiter Triphylius, and are the only people of Panchaea, that are governed by a democracy, without a monarch. They choose every year the presidents or governors, that have all matters under their cognizance, but what concerns life and death; and the most weighty matters they refer to the college of their priests. The temple of Jupiter Triphylius is about sixty furlongs distant from the city, in a champaign plain. It is in great veneration because of its antiquity and the stateliness of the structure, and the fertility of the soil.
43 The fields round about the temple are planted with all sorts of trees, not only for fruit, but for pleasure and delight; for they abound with tall cypresses, plane trees, laurels, and myrtles, the place abounding with fountains of running water: for near the temple there is such a mighty spring of sweet water rushes out of the earth, as that it becomes a navigable river: thence it divides itself into several currents and streams, and waters all the fields thereabouts, and produces thick groves of tall and shady trees; amongst which, in summer, abundance of people spend their time, and a multitude of birds of all sorts build their nests, which create great delight, both by affecting the eye with the variety of their colours, and taking the ear with the sweetness of their notes. Here are many gardens, sweet and pleasant meadows decked with all sorts of herbs and flowers, and so glorious is the prospect, that it seems to be a paradise worthy of the gods themselves.
There are here likewise large and fruitful palms, and abundance of walnut trees, which plentifully furnish the inhabitants with pleasant nuts.
Besides all these, there are a multitude of vines of all sorts, spiring up on high, and so curiously interwoven one amongst another, that they are exceeding pleasant to the view, and greatly advance the delights of the place.
44 The temple was built of white marble, most artificially jointed and cemented, two hundred yards in length, and as many in breadth, supported with great and thick pillars, curiously adorned with carved work. In this temple are placed huge statues of the gods, of admirable workmanship, and amazing largeness. Round the temple are built apartments for the priests that attend the service of the gods, by whom every thing in that sacred place is performed. All along from the temple, is an even course of ground, four furlongs in length, and a hundred yards in breadth; on either side of which are erected vast brazen statues, with four-square pedestals; at the end of the course, breaks forth the river from the fountains before mentioned, from whence flows most clear and sweet water, the drinking of which conduces much to the health of the body. This river is called the water of the sun.
The whole fountain is lined on both sides and flagged at the bottom with stone at a vast expense, and runs out on both sides for the space of four furlongs. It is not lawful for any but the priests to approach to the brink of the fountain. All the land about for two hundred furlongs round, is consecrated to the gods, and the revenues bestowed in maintaining the public sacrifices, and service of the gods: beyond these consecrated lands, is a high mountain, dedicated likewise to the gods, which they call the throne of Coelus and Triphylius Olympus; for they report that Uranus, when he governed the whole world, pleasantly diverted himself in this place; and from the top of the mount observed the motion of the heavens and stars, and that he was called Triphylius Olympus, because the inhabitants were composed of three several nations, Panchaeans, Oceanites, and Doians, who were afterwards expelled by Ammon; for it is said, that he not only rooted out this nation, but utterly destroyed all their cities, and laid Doia and Asterusia even with the ground. The priests every year solemnize a sacred festival in this mountain, with great devotion.
45 Behind this mount, in other parts of Panchaea, they say there are abundance of wild beasts of all kinds, as elephants, lions, leopards, deer, and many other wonderful creatures both for strength and proportion. In this island there are three chief cities, Hyracia, Dalis, and Oceanis. The whole country is very fertile, and especially in the production of all sorts of wine in great plenty,
The men are warlike, and use chariots in battles, after the antient manner. The whole nation is divided into three parts: the first class is of the priests, with whom are joined the artificers. The other tribe consists of the husbandmen; and the third are the militia and the shepherds,
The priests govern all, and are the sole arbitrators in every matter; for they give judgment in all controversies, and have the power and authority in all public transactions of state. The husbandmen till the land, but the fruit is brought into the common treasury, and who is judged the most skilful in husbandry, receives the largest share of the fruits for a reward in the first place; and so the second, and the rest in order to the tenth, as every one merits less or more, receives his reward by the judgment of the priests. In the same manner the shepherds and herdsmen carefully bring into the public stock, the victims and other things both by number and weight, as the nature of the things are; for it is not lawful for any to appropriate any thing to themselves particularly, except a house and a garden. For all the young breed of cattle, and other things, and all the revenues, are received by the priests, and they justly distribute to every one as their necessity does require; only the priests have a double proportion.
They wear soft and fine garments; for their sheep's wool is much finer here than any where else; both men and women likewise deck themselves with golden ornaments; for they wear necklaces of gold, and bracelets about their arms, and like the Persians, have rings hanging in their ears. Their shoes are such as others wear, but richly beautified with divers sorts of colours.
46 Their soldiers, for ordinary pay, defend the country, fortifying themselves within camps and bulwarks; for there is a part of the island infested with most daring thieves and robbers, who often lurch and surprise the husbandmen.
To conclude, these priests for delicacy, state, and purity of life, far excel all the rest of the inhabitants: their robes are of white linen, and sometimes of pure soft wool. They wear likewise mitres, embroidered with gold. Their shoes are sandals curiously wrought with exquisite workmanship, and in their ears hang golden ear-rings like to the women's.
They attend chiefly upon the service of the gods, singing melodious songs in their praises, setting forth their glorious acts and benefits bestowed upon men. The priests say they came originally from Crete, and were brought over into Panchaea by Jupiter, when he was upon earth, and governed all the world; and allege their language for a confirmation of this assertion, inasmuch as they retain many words of the Cretan speech among them. And further say, that they derived from their ancestors that civility and kindness wherewith they entertain the Cretans, the fame and report of their antient consanguinity descending continually in a perpetual succession to their posterity: they shew likewise a record written, as they say, by Jupiter's own hand, at the time when he was on earth, and laid the foundation of the temple.
There are in this island likewise mines of gold, silver,, brass,, and iron, but not lawful for any to export them. Nay, it is not lawful, for any of the priests to go out of the verge of the consecrated ground; and if any do it is lawful for any man that finds them to kill them. They have under their charge innumerable vast vessels, and other consecrated things, both of gold and silver, which have been laid up there in honour of the gods for many ages. The gates of the temple are of admirable workmanship, beautified with gold, silver, ivory, and thyme wood.
The bed of the god is six cubits long, and four broad, of massy gold, most curiously wrought in every part; near adjoining, stands the table, as large, and of the like materials and workmanship with the other in every respect.
In the middle of the bed, is placed a great golden pillar, whereon are letters inscribed, called by the Egyptians, sacred writing, expressing the famous actions of Uranus, Jupiter, Diana, and Apollo, written, they say, by Mercury himself. But this may suffice concerning the islands lying in the ocean over against Arabia.
3b. Pomponius Mela, Description of the World 3.8.81
(trans. Jason Colavito)
This fragment, not included by Némethy, appears to come from the section on Panchaea.
Outside the gulf, but still in the bend of the Red Sea, a region is infested with wild beasts and therefore deserted. A part is inhabited by the Panchaeans, whom they call Ophiophagi from the fact that they eat snakes.
3c. Pliny, Natural History 10.2
(trans. John Bostock and H. T. Riley)
This fragment, not included by Némethy, appears to come from the section on Panchaea.
The first Roman who described this bird, and who has done so with the greatest exactness, was the senator Manilius, so famous for his learning; which he owed, too, to the instructions of no teacher. He tells us that no person has ever seen this bird eat, that in Arabia it is looked upon as sacred to the sun, that it lives five hundred and forty years, that when it becomes old it builds a nest of cassia and sprigs of incense, which it fills with perfumes, and then lays its body down upon them to die; that from its bones and marrow there springs at first a sort of small worm, which in time changes into a little bird: that the first thing that it does is to perform the obsequies of its predecessor, and to carry the nest entire to the city of the Sun near Panchaia, and there deposit it upon the altar of that divinity.
4. Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.307-310
(trans. Brookes Moore)
The land we call Panchaia may be rich
in balsam, cinnamon, and costum sweet
for ointment, frankincense distilled from trees,
with many flowers besides.
5. Servius, Commentary on Vergil’s Georgics at 2.139
(trans. Jason Colavito)
Panchaia: Arabia, as we said above. Panchaia is the region of Arabia, where there is also the temple of Jupiter Triphylius: he himself elsewhere says, “The altars of the Panchaeans grow with fire.”
(trans. E. H. Gifford)
55 Euemerus, then, was a friend of King Cassander and, having boon constrained for his sake to perform some important services for the king, and some long journeys, says that he was carried away southwards into the ocean; for, having started on his voyage from Arabia Felix, he sailed many days across the ocean, and landed on some oceanic islands, one of which is that called Panchaea, in which he saw the Panchaean inhabitants, who were eminent in piety, and honoured the gods with most magnificent sacrifices and notable offerings of silver and gold.
56 The island also was sacred to the gods; and there were many other things to be admired both for their antiquity, and for the ingenuity of their manufacture, the particulars concerning which we have recorded in the books preceding this.
57 Also therein on a certain exceedingly high hill is a temple of Zeus Triphylius, erected by himself at the time when he reigned over the whole inhabited world, being still among men. In this temple there is a golden pillar, on which is inscribed in the Panchaean language a summary of the acts of Uranus, Kronos, and Zeus.
58 After this he says that Uranus was the first king, a gentle and benevolent man, and learned in the motion of the stars, who also was the first to honour the celestial deities with sacrifices, on which account he was called Uranus.
59 By his wife Ilestia he had sons Pan and Kronos, and daughters Rhea and Demeter: and after Uranus, Kronos became king and, having married Rhea, begat Zeus and Hera and Poseidon.
3a. Diodorus Siculus, Library 5.42-46
(trans. G. Booth)
42 … There are many things observable in Panchaea, that deserve to be taken notice of. The natural inhabitants are those they call Panchaei; the strangers that dwell among them are people of the western parts, together with Indians, Cretans, and Scythians. In this island there is a famous city, called Panara, not inferior to any for wealth and grandeur. The citizens are called the suppliants of Jupiter Triphylius, and are the only people of Panchaea, that are governed by a democracy, without a monarch. They choose every year the presidents or governors, that have all matters under their cognizance, but what concerns life and death; and the most weighty matters they refer to the college of their priests. The temple of Jupiter Triphylius is about sixty furlongs distant from the city, in a champaign plain. It is in great veneration because of its antiquity and the stateliness of the structure, and the fertility of the soil.
43 The fields round about the temple are planted with all sorts of trees, not only for fruit, but for pleasure and delight; for they abound with tall cypresses, plane trees, laurels, and myrtles, the place abounding with fountains of running water: for near the temple there is such a mighty spring of sweet water rushes out of the earth, as that it becomes a navigable river: thence it divides itself into several currents and streams, and waters all the fields thereabouts, and produces thick groves of tall and shady trees; amongst which, in summer, abundance of people spend their time, and a multitude of birds of all sorts build their nests, which create great delight, both by affecting the eye with the variety of their colours, and taking the ear with the sweetness of their notes. Here are many gardens, sweet and pleasant meadows decked with all sorts of herbs and flowers, and so glorious is the prospect, that it seems to be a paradise worthy of the gods themselves.
There are here likewise large and fruitful palms, and abundance of walnut trees, which plentifully furnish the inhabitants with pleasant nuts.
Besides all these, there are a multitude of vines of all sorts, spiring up on high, and so curiously interwoven one amongst another, that they are exceeding pleasant to the view, and greatly advance the delights of the place.
44 The temple was built of white marble, most artificially jointed and cemented, two hundred yards in length, and as many in breadth, supported with great and thick pillars, curiously adorned with carved work. In this temple are placed huge statues of the gods, of admirable workmanship, and amazing largeness. Round the temple are built apartments for the priests that attend the service of the gods, by whom every thing in that sacred place is performed. All along from the temple, is an even course of ground, four furlongs in length, and a hundred yards in breadth; on either side of which are erected vast brazen statues, with four-square pedestals; at the end of the course, breaks forth the river from the fountains before mentioned, from whence flows most clear and sweet water, the drinking of which conduces much to the health of the body. This river is called the water of the sun.
The whole fountain is lined on both sides and flagged at the bottom with stone at a vast expense, and runs out on both sides for the space of four furlongs. It is not lawful for any but the priests to approach to the brink of the fountain. All the land about for two hundred furlongs round, is consecrated to the gods, and the revenues bestowed in maintaining the public sacrifices, and service of the gods: beyond these consecrated lands, is a high mountain, dedicated likewise to the gods, which they call the throne of Coelus and Triphylius Olympus; for they report that Uranus, when he governed the whole world, pleasantly diverted himself in this place; and from the top of the mount observed the motion of the heavens and stars, and that he was called Triphylius Olympus, because the inhabitants were composed of three several nations, Panchaeans, Oceanites, and Doians, who were afterwards expelled by Ammon; for it is said, that he not only rooted out this nation, but utterly destroyed all their cities, and laid Doia and Asterusia even with the ground. The priests every year solemnize a sacred festival in this mountain, with great devotion.
45 Behind this mount, in other parts of Panchaea, they say there are abundance of wild beasts of all kinds, as elephants, lions, leopards, deer, and many other wonderful creatures both for strength and proportion. In this island there are three chief cities, Hyracia, Dalis, and Oceanis. The whole country is very fertile, and especially in the production of all sorts of wine in great plenty,
The men are warlike, and use chariots in battles, after the antient manner. The whole nation is divided into three parts: the first class is of the priests, with whom are joined the artificers. The other tribe consists of the husbandmen; and the third are the militia and the shepherds,
The priests govern all, and are the sole arbitrators in every matter; for they give judgment in all controversies, and have the power and authority in all public transactions of state. The husbandmen till the land, but the fruit is brought into the common treasury, and who is judged the most skilful in husbandry, receives the largest share of the fruits for a reward in the first place; and so the second, and the rest in order to the tenth, as every one merits less or more, receives his reward by the judgment of the priests. In the same manner the shepherds and herdsmen carefully bring into the public stock, the victims and other things both by number and weight, as the nature of the things are; for it is not lawful for any to appropriate any thing to themselves particularly, except a house and a garden. For all the young breed of cattle, and other things, and all the revenues, are received by the priests, and they justly distribute to every one as their necessity does require; only the priests have a double proportion.
They wear soft and fine garments; for their sheep's wool is much finer here than any where else; both men and women likewise deck themselves with golden ornaments; for they wear necklaces of gold, and bracelets about their arms, and like the Persians, have rings hanging in their ears. Their shoes are such as others wear, but richly beautified with divers sorts of colours.
46 Their soldiers, for ordinary pay, defend the country, fortifying themselves within camps and bulwarks; for there is a part of the island infested with most daring thieves and robbers, who often lurch and surprise the husbandmen.
To conclude, these priests for delicacy, state, and purity of life, far excel all the rest of the inhabitants: their robes are of white linen, and sometimes of pure soft wool. They wear likewise mitres, embroidered with gold. Their shoes are sandals curiously wrought with exquisite workmanship, and in their ears hang golden ear-rings like to the women's.
They attend chiefly upon the service of the gods, singing melodious songs in their praises, setting forth their glorious acts and benefits bestowed upon men. The priests say they came originally from Crete, and were brought over into Panchaea by Jupiter, when he was upon earth, and governed all the world; and allege their language for a confirmation of this assertion, inasmuch as they retain many words of the Cretan speech among them. And further say, that they derived from their ancestors that civility and kindness wherewith they entertain the Cretans, the fame and report of their antient consanguinity descending continually in a perpetual succession to their posterity: they shew likewise a record written, as they say, by Jupiter's own hand, at the time when he was on earth, and laid the foundation of the temple.
There are in this island likewise mines of gold, silver,, brass,, and iron, but not lawful for any to export them. Nay, it is not lawful, for any of the priests to go out of the verge of the consecrated ground; and if any do it is lawful for any man that finds them to kill them. They have under their charge innumerable vast vessels, and other consecrated things, both of gold and silver, which have been laid up there in honour of the gods for many ages. The gates of the temple are of admirable workmanship, beautified with gold, silver, ivory, and thyme wood.
The bed of the god is six cubits long, and four broad, of massy gold, most curiously wrought in every part; near adjoining, stands the table, as large, and of the like materials and workmanship with the other in every respect.
In the middle of the bed, is placed a great golden pillar, whereon are letters inscribed, called by the Egyptians, sacred writing, expressing the famous actions of Uranus, Jupiter, Diana, and Apollo, written, they say, by Mercury himself. But this may suffice concerning the islands lying in the ocean over against Arabia.
3b. Pomponius Mela, Description of the World 3.8.81
(trans. Jason Colavito)
This fragment, not included by Némethy, appears to come from the section on Panchaea.
Outside the gulf, but still in the bend of the Red Sea, a region is infested with wild beasts and therefore deserted. A part is inhabited by the Panchaeans, whom they call Ophiophagi from the fact that they eat snakes.
3c. Pliny, Natural History 10.2
(trans. John Bostock and H. T. Riley)
This fragment, not included by Némethy, appears to come from the section on Panchaea.
The first Roman who described this bird, and who has done so with the greatest exactness, was the senator Manilius, so famous for his learning; which he owed, too, to the instructions of no teacher. He tells us that no person has ever seen this bird eat, that in Arabia it is looked upon as sacred to the sun, that it lives five hundred and forty years, that when it becomes old it builds a nest of cassia and sprigs of incense, which it fills with perfumes, and then lays its body down upon them to die; that from its bones and marrow there springs at first a sort of small worm, which in time changes into a little bird: that the first thing that it does is to perform the obsequies of its predecessor, and to carry the nest entire to the city of the Sun near Panchaia, and there deposit it upon the altar of that divinity.
4. Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.307-310
(trans. Brookes Moore)
The land we call Panchaia may be rich
in balsam, cinnamon, and costum sweet
for ointment, frankincense distilled from trees,
with many flowers besides.
5. Servius, Commentary on Vergil’s Georgics at 2.139
(trans. Jason Colavito)
Panchaia: Arabia, as we said above. Panchaia is the region of Arabia, where there is also the temple of Jupiter Triphylius: he himself elsewhere says, “The altars of the Panchaeans grow with fire.”
ON OURANOS
6. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 2.2
(trans. E. H. Gifford)
After this he says that Uranus was the first king, a gentle and benevolent man, and learned in the motion of the stars, who also was the first to honour the celestial deities with sacrifices, on which account he was called Uranus. By his wife Ilestia he had sons Pan and Kronos, and daughters Rhea and Demeter.
7a. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.13
(trans. William Fletcher)
Ennius, indeed, in his translation of Euhemerus says that Saturn was not the first who reigned, but his father Uranus. In the beginning, he says, Cœlus first had the supreme power on the earth. He instituted and prepared that kingdom in conjunction with his brothers.
7b. Lactantius, Epitome of the Divine Institutes ch. 14.
(trans. Jason Colavito)
Hermes asserts, and the Sacred History teaches, that Saturn’s father was called Uranus. Trismegistus, when he said that “there were very few” men of “perfect learning,” listed among them his relatives, Uranus, Saturn, and Mercury. Euhemerus mentions that the same Uranus first reigned on earth, in these words: “In the beginning, Caelus had supreme power on earth. He established and prepared that kingdom for himself together with his brothers.”
8. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.11.
(trans. William Fletcher)
To whom, then, could Jupiter have offered sacrifice, except to his grandfather Cœlus, who, according to the saying of Euhemerus, died in Oceania, and was buried in the town of Aulatia?
(trans. E. H. Gifford)
After this he says that Uranus was the first king, a gentle and benevolent man, and learned in the motion of the stars, who also was the first to honour the celestial deities with sacrifices, on which account he was called Uranus. By his wife Ilestia he had sons Pan and Kronos, and daughters Rhea and Demeter.
7a. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.13
(trans. William Fletcher)
Ennius, indeed, in his translation of Euhemerus says that Saturn was not the first who reigned, but his father Uranus. In the beginning, he says, Cœlus first had the supreme power on the earth. He instituted and prepared that kingdom in conjunction with his brothers.
7b. Lactantius, Epitome of the Divine Institutes ch. 14.
(trans. Jason Colavito)
Hermes asserts, and the Sacred History teaches, that Saturn’s father was called Uranus. Trismegistus, when he said that “there were very few” men of “perfect learning,” listed among them his relatives, Uranus, Saturn, and Mercury. Euhemerus mentions that the same Uranus first reigned on earth, in these words: “In the beginning, Caelus had supreme power on earth. He established and prepared that kingdom for himself together with his brothers.”
8. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.11.
(trans. William Fletcher)
To whom, then, could Jupiter have offered sacrifice, except to his grandfather Cœlus, who, according to the saying of Euhemerus, died in Oceania, and was buried in the town of Aulatia?
ON KRONOS
9. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 2.2
(trans. E. H. Gifford)
“And after Uranus, Kronos became king and, having married Rhea, begat Zeus and Hera and Poseidon.” And Zeus, having succeeded to the kingdom of Kronos, married Hera and Demeter and Themis, of whom he begat children, of the first the Curetes, of the second Persephone, and of the third Athena.”
10. John Lydus, On the Months 4.154
(translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence)
And the tradition records that he (sc. Saturn, i.e., Cronus) ruled as king, as I previously recounted, over Libya and Sicily, and that he settled those regions and founded a city—as Charax says—the one formerly called Kronia and now called Hierà Polis (‘Holy City’), as Isigonos in On the Greek Gods and Wars, and also Aeschylus in Aetna, hand down; or, as the whole story is elaborated according to Euhemerus, wisely concealing the true interpretation of the so-called gods. He [rightly says in] On Dionysus that the just kings and priests were honored by the gods themselves with equal honors and titles. And thus the myth has been told in this way, but the historical account has been passed down as fiction.
11. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.14
(trans. William Fletcher)
Now, since the sacred history differs in some degree from those things which we have related, let us open those things which are contained in the true writings, that we may not, in accusing superstitions, appear to follow and approve of the follies of the poets. These are the words of Ennius: “Afterwards Saturn married Ops. Titan, who was older than Saturn, demands the kingdom for himself. Upon this their mother Vesta, and their sisters Ceres and Ops, advise Saturn not to give up the kingdom to his brother. Then Titan, who was inferior in person to Saturn, on that account, and because he saw that his mother and sisters were using their endeavours that Saturn might reign, yielded the kingdom to him. He therefore made an agreement with Saturn, that if any male children should be born to him, he would not bring them up. He did so for this purpose, that the kingdom might return to his own sons. Then, when a son was first born to Saturn, they slew him. Afterwards twins were born, Jupiter and Juno. Upon this they present Juno to the sight of Saturn, and secretly hide Jupiter, and give him to Vesta to be brought up, concealing him from Saturn.”
11b. The (Pseudo-) Sibylline Oracles 3
(trans. Milton S. Terry)
It is unclear what connection the Oracle has to Euhemerus, who wrote a century earlier, but its claims about the succession of the gods are cited by Lactantius (fr. 11a above) as those of Euhemerus.
And then the generation tenth appeared
Of mortal men, from the time when the flood
Came upon earlier men. And Cronos reigned,
And Titan and Iapetus; and men called them
Best offspring of Gaia and of Uranus,
Giving to them names both of earth and heaven,
Since they were very first of mortal men.
So there were three divisions of the earth
According to the allotment of each man,
And each one having his own portion reigned
And fought not; for a father's oaths were there
And equal were their portions. But the time
Complete of old age on the father came,
And he died; and the sons infringing oaths
Stirred up against each other bitter strife,
Which one should have the royal rank and rule
Over all mortals; and against each other
Cronos and Titan fought. But Rhea and Gaia,
And Aphrodite fond of crowns, Demeter,
And Hestia and Dione of fair locks
Brought them to friendship, and together called
All who were kings, both brothers and near kin,
And others of the same ancestral blood,
And they judged Cronos should reign king of all,
For he was oldest and of noblest form.
But Titan laid on Cronos mighty oaths
To rear no male posterity, that he
Himself might reign when age and fate should come
To Cronos. And whenever Rhea bore
Beside her sat the Titans, and all males
In pieces tore, but let the females live
To be reared by the mother. But When now
At the third birth the august Rhea bore,
She brought forth Hera first; and when they saw
A female offspring, the fierce Titan men
Betook them to their homes. And thereupon
Rhea a male child bore, and having bound
Three men of Crete by oath she quickly sent
Him into Phrygia to be reared apart
In secret; therefore did they name him Zeus,
For he was sent away. And thus she sent
Poseidon also secretly away.
And Pluto, third, did Rhea yet again,
Noblest of women, at Dodona bear,
Whence flows Europus' river's liquid course,
And with Peneus mixed pours in the sea
Its water, and men call it Stygian.
But when the Titans heard that there were sons
Kept secretly, whom Cronos and his wife
Rhea begat, then Titan sixty youths
Together gathered, and held fast in chains
Cronos and his wife Rhea, and concealed
Them in the earth and guarded them in bonds.
And then the sons of powerful Cronos heard,
And a great war and uproar they aroused.
And this is the beginning of dire war
Among all mortals. [For it is indeed
With mortals the prime origin of war.]
And then did God award the Titans evil.
And all of Titans and of Cronos born
Died.
12. Columella, On Agriculture 9.2
(trans. Jason Colavito)
Nor is it truly fitting for a farmer to inquire whether the woman Melissa, whom Jupiter transformed into a bee, was of the most beautiful appearance, or whether, as the poet Euhemerus says, bees were born from hornets and the sun, and raised by the nymphs called the Phryxonides; and that they later became the nurses of Jupiter in the Dictaean cave, having received their food as a gift from the god, with which they had nourished the little infant. For matters like these, although not unworthy of a poet, Vergil nonetheless only touched on them briefly and lightly in a single verse, when he said: ‘In the Dictaean cave they fed the king of heaven.’
But even that does not concern farmers — namely, when and in what region bees first came into being: whether in Thessaly under Aristaeus, or on the island of Ceos, as Euhemerus writes, or on Mount Hymettus in the time of Erechtheus, as Euthronius says, or in Crete in the time of Saturn, according to Menander.
13. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.14
(trans. William Fletcher)
Ops also brings forth Neptune without the knowledge of Saturn, and secretly hides him. In the same manner Ops brings forth twins by a third birth, Pluto and Glauca. Pluto in Latin is Dispater; others call him Orcus. Upon this they show to Saturn the daughter Glauca, and conceal and hide the son Pluto. Then Glauca dies while yet young.” This is the lineage of Jupiter and his brothers, as these things are written, and the relationship is handed down to us after this manner from the sacred narrative.
14. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.13
(trans. William Fletcher)
And being in fear of this, it is plain that he did not devour his sons, as the fables report, but put them to death; although it is written in Sacred History that Saturn and Ops, and other men, were at that time accustomed to eat human flesh, but that Jupiter, who gave to men laws and civilization, was the first who by an edict prohibited the use of that food.
15. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.14
(trans. William Fletcher)
Also shortly afterwards he introduces these things: “Then Titan, when he learned that sons were born to Saturn, and secretly brought up, secretly takes with him his sons, who are called Titans, and seizes his brother Saturn and Ops, and encloses them within a wall, and places over them a guard.”
16. Ennius, in Nonius, De compendiosa doctrina 7
(trans. E. H. Warmington)
When great Titan was afflicting him with cruel duress.
17. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.11
(trans. William Fletcher)
Cæsar also, in Aratus, relates that Aglaosthenes says that when he was setting out from the island of Naxos against the Titans, and was offering sacrifice on the shore, an eagle flew to Jupiter as an omen, and that the victor received it as a good token, and placed it under his own protection. But the Sacred History testifies that even beforehand an eagle had sat upon his head, and portended to him the kingdom.
18. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.14
(trans. William Fletcher)
The rest of the history is thus put together. It is said that Jupiter, when grown up, having heard that his father and mother had been surrounded with a guard and imprisoned, came with a great multitude of Cretans, and conquered Titan and his sons in an engagement, and rescued his parents from imprisonment, restored the kingdom to his father, and thus returned into Crete. Then, after these things, they say that an oracle was given to Saturn, bidding him to take heed lest his son should expel him from the kingdom; that he, for the sake of weakening the oracle and avoiding the danger, laid an ambush for Jupiter to kill him; that Jupiter, having learned the plot, claimed the kingdom for himself afresh, and banished Saturn; and that he, when he had been tossed over all lands, followed by armed men whom Jupiter had sent to seize or put him to death, scarcely found a place of concealment in Italy.
19. Augustine, Letter 17.1
(trans. J. G. Cunningham)
For, in the first place, a comparison was drawn by you between Mount Olympus and your market-place, the reason for which I cannot divine, unless it was in order to remind me that on the said mountain Jupiter pitched his camp when he was at war with his father, as we are taught by history, which your religionists call sacred.
20. Augustine, City of God 7.27
(trans. Marcus Dods)
For this which Virgil says,
Then from Olympus' heights came down
Good Saturn, exiled from his throne
By Jove, his mightier heir;
and what follows with reference to this affair, is fully related by the historian Euhemerus, and has been translated into Latin by Ennius.
(trans. E. H. Gifford)
“And after Uranus, Kronos became king and, having married Rhea, begat Zeus and Hera and Poseidon.” And Zeus, having succeeded to the kingdom of Kronos, married Hera and Demeter and Themis, of whom he begat children, of the first the Curetes, of the second Persephone, and of the third Athena.”
10. John Lydus, On the Months 4.154
(translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence)
And the tradition records that he (sc. Saturn, i.e., Cronus) ruled as king, as I previously recounted, over Libya and Sicily, and that he settled those regions and founded a city—as Charax says—the one formerly called Kronia and now called Hierà Polis (‘Holy City’), as Isigonos in On the Greek Gods and Wars, and also Aeschylus in Aetna, hand down; or, as the whole story is elaborated according to Euhemerus, wisely concealing the true interpretation of the so-called gods. He [rightly says in] On Dionysus that the just kings and priests were honored by the gods themselves with equal honors and titles. And thus the myth has been told in this way, but the historical account has been passed down as fiction.
11. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.14
(trans. William Fletcher)
Now, since the sacred history differs in some degree from those things which we have related, let us open those things which are contained in the true writings, that we may not, in accusing superstitions, appear to follow and approve of the follies of the poets. These are the words of Ennius: “Afterwards Saturn married Ops. Titan, who was older than Saturn, demands the kingdom for himself. Upon this their mother Vesta, and their sisters Ceres and Ops, advise Saturn not to give up the kingdom to his brother. Then Titan, who was inferior in person to Saturn, on that account, and because he saw that his mother and sisters were using their endeavours that Saturn might reign, yielded the kingdom to him. He therefore made an agreement with Saturn, that if any male children should be born to him, he would not bring them up. He did so for this purpose, that the kingdom might return to his own sons. Then, when a son was first born to Saturn, they slew him. Afterwards twins were born, Jupiter and Juno. Upon this they present Juno to the sight of Saturn, and secretly hide Jupiter, and give him to Vesta to be brought up, concealing him from Saturn.”
11b. The (Pseudo-) Sibylline Oracles 3
(trans. Milton S. Terry)
It is unclear what connection the Oracle has to Euhemerus, who wrote a century earlier, but its claims about the succession of the gods are cited by Lactantius (fr. 11a above) as those of Euhemerus.
And then the generation tenth appeared
Of mortal men, from the time when the flood
Came upon earlier men. And Cronos reigned,
And Titan and Iapetus; and men called them
Best offspring of Gaia and of Uranus,
Giving to them names both of earth and heaven,
Since they were very first of mortal men.
So there were three divisions of the earth
According to the allotment of each man,
And each one having his own portion reigned
And fought not; for a father's oaths were there
And equal were their portions. But the time
Complete of old age on the father came,
And he died; and the sons infringing oaths
Stirred up against each other bitter strife,
Which one should have the royal rank and rule
Over all mortals; and against each other
Cronos and Titan fought. But Rhea and Gaia,
And Aphrodite fond of crowns, Demeter,
And Hestia and Dione of fair locks
Brought them to friendship, and together called
All who were kings, both brothers and near kin,
And others of the same ancestral blood,
And they judged Cronos should reign king of all,
For he was oldest and of noblest form.
But Titan laid on Cronos mighty oaths
To rear no male posterity, that he
Himself might reign when age and fate should come
To Cronos. And whenever Rhea bore
Beside her sat the Titans, and all males
In pieces tore, but let the females live
To be reared by the mother. But When now
At the third birth the august Rhea bore,
She brought forth Hera first; and when they saw
A female offspring, the fierce Titan men
Betook them to their homes. And thereupon
Rhea a male child bore, and having bound
Three men of Crete by oath she quickly sent
Him into Phrygia to be reared apart
In secret; therefore did they name him Zeus,
For he was sent away. And thus she sent
Poseidon also secretly away.
And Pluto, third, did Rhea yet again,
Noblest of women, at Dodona bear,
Whence flows Europus' river's liquid course,
And with Peneus mixed pours in the sea
Its water, and men call it Stygian.
But when the Titans heard that there were sons
Kept secretly, whom Cronos and his wife
Rhea begat, then Titan sixty youths
Together gathered, and held fast in chains
Cronos and his wife Rhea, and concealed
Them in the earth and guarded them in bonds.
And then the sons of powerful Cronos heard,
And a great war and uproar they aroused.
And this is the beginning of dire war
Among all mortals. [For it is indeed
With mortals the prime origin of war.]
And then did God award the Titans evil.
And all of Titans and of Cronos born
Died.
12. Columella, On Agriculture 9.2
(trans. Jason Colavito)
Nor is it truly fitting for a farmer to inquire whether the woman Melissa, whom Jupiter transformed into a bee, was of the most beautiful appearance, or whether, as the poet Euhemerus says, bees were born from hornets and the sun, and raised by the nymphs called the Phryxonides; and that they later became the nurses of Jupiter in the Dictaean cave, having received their food as a gift from the god, with which they had nourished the little infant. For matters like these, although not unworthy of a poet, Vergil nonetheless only touched on them briefly and lightly in a single verse, when he said: ‘In the Dictaean cave they fed the king of heaven.’
But even that does not concern farmers — namely, when and in what region bees first came into being: whether in Thessaly under Aristaeus, or on the island of Ceos, as Euhemerus writes, or on Mount Hymettus in the time of Erechtheus, as Euthronius says, or in Crete in the time of Saturn, according to Menander.
13. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.14
(trans. William Fletcher)
Ops also brings forth Neptune without the knowledge of Saturn, and secretly hides him. In the same manner Ops brings forth twins by a third birth, Pluto and Glauca. Pluto in Latin is Dispater; others call him Orcus. Upon this they show to Saturn the daughter Glauca, and conceal and hide the son Pluto. Then Glauca dies while yet young.” This is the lineage of Jupiter and his brothers, as these things are written, and the relationship is handed down to us after this manner from the sacred narrative.
14. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.13
(trans. William Fletcher)
And being in fear of this, it is plain that he did not devour his sons, as the fables report, but put them to death; although it is written in Sacred History that Saturn and Ops, and other men, were at that time accustomed to eat human flesh, but that Jupiter, who gave to men laws and civilization, was the first who by an edict prohibited the use of that food.
15. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.14
(trans. William Fletcher)
Also shortly afterwards he introduces these things: “Then Titan, when he learned that sons were born to Saturn, and secretly brought up, secretly takes with him his sons, who are called Titans, and seizes his brother Saturn and Ops, and encloses them within a wall, and places over them a guard.”
16. Ennius, in Nonius, De compendiosa doctrina 7
(trans. E. H. Warmington)
When great Titan was afflicting him with cruel duress.
17. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.11
(trans. William Fletcher)
Cæsar also, in Aratus, relates that Aglaosthenes says that when he was setting out from the island of Naxos against the Titans, and was offering sacrifice on the shore, an eagle flew to Jupiter as an omen, and that the victor received it as a good token, and placed it under his own protection. But the Sacred History testifies that even beforehand an eagle had sat upon his head, and portended to him the kingdom.
18. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.14
(trans. William Fletcher)
The rest of the history is thus put together. It is said that Jupiter, when grown up, having heard that his father and mother had been surrounded with a guard and imprisoned, came with a great multitude of Cretans, and conquered Titan and his sons in an engagement, and rescued his parents from imprisonment, restored the kingdom to his father, and thus returned into Crete. Then, after these things, they say that an oracle was given to Saturn, bidding him to take heed lest his son should expel him from the kingdom; that he, for the sake of weakening the oracle and avoiding the danger, laid an ambush for Jupiter to kill him; that Jupiter, having learned the plot, claimed the kingdom for himself afresh, and banished Saturn; and that he, when he had been tossed over all lands, followed by armed men whom Jupiter had sent to seize or put him to death, scarcely found a place of concealment in Italy.
19. Augustine, Letter 17.1
(trans. J. G. Cunningham)
For, in the first place, a comparison was drawn by you between Mount Olympus and your market-place, the reason for which I cannot divine, unless it was in order to remind me that on the said mountain Jupiter pitched his camp when he was at war with his father, as we are taught by history, which your religionists call sacred.
20. Augustine, City of God 7.27
(trans. Marcus Dods)
For this which Virgil says,
Then from Olympus' heights came down
Good Saturn, exiled from his throne
By Jove, his mightier heir;
and what follows with reference to this affair, is fully related by the historian Euhemerus, and has been translated into Latin by Ennius.
ON ZEUS
21. Diodorus Siculus, Book 6, preserved in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 2.2
(trans. E. H. Gifford)
And Zeus, having succeeded to the kingdom of Kronos, married Hera and Demeter and Themis, of whom he begat children, of the first the Curetes, of the second Persephone, and of the third Athena.
“And when he had come to Babylon he was entertained as a guest by Belus: and afterwards on arriving at the island Panchaea, which lay by the ocean, he built an altar to his own grandfather Uranus: and thence he came through Syria to the sovereign of that time Casius, of whom mount Casius is named; and came into Cilicia and conquered in war Cilix the ruler of the country; and visited very many other nations and was honoured among all, and was proclaimed a god.”
22. Hyginus, Astronomica 2.13
(trans. Jason Colavito)
Euhemerus says that there was a certain woman named Aega, the wife of Pan; that she was raped by Jupiter and gave birth to a child whom she said was the son of her husband Pan. Thus, the boy was called Aegipan, and Jupiter was called Aegiochus. Because he (Jupiter) loved him very much, he placed the figure of a goat among the stars in memory of him.
23. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.11
(trans. William Fletcher)
Euhemerus, an ancient author, who was of the city of Messene, collected the actions of Jupiter and of the others, who are esteemed gods, and composed a history from the titles and sacred inscriptions which were in the most ancient temples, and especially in the sanctuary of the Triphylian Jupiter, where an inscription indicated that a golden column had been placed by Jupiter himself, on which column he wrote an account of his exploits, that posterity might have a memorial of his actions. This history was translated and followed by Ennius, whose words are these: “Where Jupiter gives to Neptune the government of the sea, that he might reign in all the islands and places bordering on the sea.”
24. Diodorus 6, in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 2.2
(trans. E. H. Gifford)
“And when he had come to Babylon he was entertained as a guest by Belus: and afterwards on arriving at the island Panchaea, which lay by the ocean, he built an altar to his own grandfather Uranus.”
25. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.11
(trans. William Fletcher)
Ennius thus relates in his Sacred History: “Then Pan leads him to the mountain, which is called the pillar of heaven. Having ascended there, he surveyed the lands far and wide, and there on that mountain he builds an altar to Cœlus; and Jupiter was the first who offered sacrifice on that altar. In that place he looked up to heaven, by which name we now call it, and that which was above the world which was called the firmament, and he gave to the heaven its name from the name of his grandfather; and Jupiter in prayer first gave the name of heaven to that which was called firmament, and he burnt entire the victim which he there offered in sacrifice.”
26. Diodorus 6, in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 2.2
(trans. E. H. Gifford)
And thence he came through Syria to the sovereign of that time Casius, of whom mount Casius is named; and came into Cilicia and conquered in war Cilix the ruler of the country; and visited very many other nations and was honoured among all, and was proclaimed a god.
27a. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.22
(trans. William Fletcher)
But the Sacred History testifies that Jupiter himself, when he had gained possession of power, arrived at such insolence that he built temples in honour of himself in many places. For when he went about to different lands, on his arrival in each region, he united to himself the kings or princes of the people in hospitality and friendship; and when he was departing from each, he ordered that a shrine should be dedicated to himself in the name of his host, as though the remembrance of their friendship and league could thus be preserved. Thus temples were founded in honour of Jupiter Atabyrius and Jupiter Labrandius; for Atabyrius and Labrandius were his entertainers and assistants in war. Temples were also built to Jupiter Laprius, to Jupiter Molion, to Jupiter Casius, and others, after the same manner. This was a very crafty device on his part, that he might both acquire divine honour for himself, and a perpetual name for his entertainers in conjunction with religious observances. Accordingly they were glad, and cheerfully submitted to his command, and observed annual rites and festivals for the sake of handing down their own name. Æneas did something like this in Sicily, when he gave the name of his host Acestes to a city which he had built, that Acestes might afterwards joyfully and willingly love, increase, and adorn it. In this manner Jupiter spread abroad through the world the observance of his worship, and gave an example for the imitation of others.
27b. Lactantius, Epitome of the Divine Institutes 19.
(trans. Jason Colavito)
But Euhemerus in the Sacred History says that “Jupiter himself, after he had assumed power, erected shrines to himself in many places.” For, as he traveled around the world, as he came to each place, he associated the leaders of the peoples with him by friendship and by the law of hospitality. In order that the memory of this event might be preserved, he ordered a shrine to be built for him and an annual festival to be celebrated by his guests. Thus, he sowed the cult of his name throughout all lands.
28. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.11
(trans. William Fletcher)
But the same history informs us that Jupiter dwelt on Mount Olympus, when it says: “At that time Jupiter spent the greatest part of his life on Mount Olympus; and they used to resort to him there for the administration of justice, if any matters were disputed. Moreover, if any one had found out any new invention which might be useful for human life, he used to come there and display it to Jupiter.”
29. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.11
(trans. William Fletcher)
Ennius, in his Sacred History, having described all the actions which he [Jupiter] performed in his life, at the close thus speaks: Then Jupiter, when he had five times made a circuit of the earth, and bestowed governments upon all his friends and relatives, and left laws to men, provided them with a settled mode of life and grain, and given them many other benefits, and having been honoured with immortal glory and remembrance, left lasting memorials to his friends, and when his age was almost spent, he changed his life in Crete, and departed to the gods. And the Curetes, his sons, took charge of him, and honoured him; and his tomb is in Crete, in the town of Cnossus, and Vesta is said to have founded this city; and on his tomb is an inscription in ancient Greek characters, “Zan Kronou,” which is in Latin, “Jupiter the son of Saturn.”
29b. Lactantius, Epitome of the Divine Institutes 13
(trans. Jason Colavito)
But let us leave aside the poets: let us come to history, which is based both on both faithful accounts and venerable antiquity. Euhemerus was a Messenian, a very ancient writer, who collected from the sacred inscriptions of ancient temples the origin of Jupiter and his deeds and those of all his offspring; he also traced the parents, homelands, actions, authorities, deaths, and tombs of the other gods. This history Ennius translated into the Latin language, the words of which are these: “This, as written, is the lineage and kinship of Jupiter and his brothers: in this way it has been handed down to us from sacred writing. Therefore the same Euhemerus reports that Jupiter, after having five times circumnavigated the globe and distributed authority to his friends and relatives, and having made laws for men and many other good things, exchanged his life for immortal glory and everlasting memory in Crete and departed to the gods; and that his tomb is in Crete, in the town of Knossos, and on it is written in ancient Greek letters ZAN KRONOU, which is “Jupiter, the son of Saturn.” It is clear, therefore, from what I have related, that he was a man and reigned on earth.
(trans. E. H. Gifford)
And Zeus, having succeeded to the kingdom of Kronos, married Hera and Demeter and Themis, of whom he begat children, of the first the Curetes, of the second Persephone, and of the third Athena.
“And when he had come to Babylon he was entertained as a guest by Belus: and afterwards on arriving at the island Panchaea, which lay by the ocean, he built an altar to his own grandfather Uranus: and thence he came through Syria to the sovereign of that time Casius, of whom mount Casius is named; and came into Cilicia and conquered in war Cilix the ruler of the country; and visited very many other nations and was honoured among all, and was proclaimed a god.”
22. Hyginus, Astronomica 2.13
(trans. Jason Colavito)
Euhemerus says that there was a certain woman named Aega, the wife of Pan; that she was raped by Jupiter and gave birth to a child whom she said was the son of her husband Pan. Thus, the boy was called Aegipan, and Jupiter was called Aegiochus. Because he (Jupiter) loved him very much, he placed the figure of a goat among the stars in memory of him.
23. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.11
(trans. William Fletcher)
Euhemerus, an ancient author, who was of the city of Messene, collected the actions of Jupiter and of the others, who are esteemed gods, and composed a history from the titles and sacred inscriptions which were in the most ancient temples, and especially in the sanctuary of the Triphylian Jupiter, where an inscription indicated that a golden column had been placed by Jupiter himself, on which column he wrote an account of his exploits, that posterity might have a memorial of his actions. This history was translated and followed by Ennius, whose words are these: “Where Jupiter gives to Neptune the government of the sea, that he might reign in all the islands and places bordering on the sea.”
24. Diodorus 6, in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 2.2
(trans. E. H. Gifford)
“And when he had come to Babylon he was entertained as a guest by Belus: and afterwards on arriving at the island Panchaea, which lay by the ocean, he built an altar to his own grandfather Uranus.”
25. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.11
(trans. William Fletcher)
Ennius thus relates in his Sacred History: “Then Pan leads him to the mountain, which is called the pillar of heaven. Having ascended there, he surveyed the lands far and wide, and there on that mountain he builds an altar to Cœlus; and Jupiter was the first who offered sacrifice on that altar. In that place he looked up to heaven, by which name we now call it, and that which was above the world which was called the firmament, and he gave to the heaven its name from the name of his grandfather; and Jupiter in prayer first gave the name of heaven to that which was called firmament, and he burnt entire the victim which he there offered in sacrifice.”
26. Diodorus 6, in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 2.2
(trans. E. H. Gifford)
And thence he came through Syria to the sovereign of that time Casius, of whom mount Casius is named; and came into Cilicia and conquered in war Cilix the ruler of the country; and visited very many other nations and was honoured among all, and was proclaimed a god.
27a. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.22
(trans. William Fletcher)
But the Sacred History testifies that Jupiter himself, when he had gained possession of power, arrived at such insolence that he built temples in honour of himself in many places. For when he went about to different lands, on his arrival in each region, he united to himself the kings or princes of the people in hospitality and friendship; and when he was departing from each, he ordered that a shrine should be dedicated to himself in the name of his host, as though the remembrance of their friendship and league could thus be preserved. Thus temples were founded in honour of Jupiter Atabyrius and Jupiter Labrandius; for Atabyrius and Labrandius were his entertainers and assistants in war. Temples were also built to Jupiter Laprius, to Jupiter Molion, to Jupiter Casius, and others, after the same manner. This was a very crafty device on his part, that he might both acquire divine honour for himself, and a perpetual name for his entertainers in conjunction with religious observances. Accordingly they were glad, and cheerfully submitted to his command, and observed annual rites and festivals for the sake of handing down their own name. Æneas did something like this in Sicily, when he gave the name of his host Acestes to a city which he had built, that Acestes might afterwards joyfully and willingly love, increase, and adorn it. In this manner Jupiter spread abroad through the world the observance of his worship, and gave an example for the imitation of others.
27b. Lactantius, Epitome of the Divine Institutes 19.
(trans. Jason Colavito)
But Euhemerus in the Sacred History says that “Jupiter himself, after he had assumed power, erected shrines to himself in many places.” For, as he traveled around the world, as he came to each place, he associated the leaders of the peoples with him by friendship and by the law of hospitality. In order that the memory of this event might be preserved, he ordered a shrine to be built for him and an annual festival to be celebrated by his guests. Thus, he sowed the cult of his name throughout all lands.
28. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.11
(trans. William Fletcher)
But the same history informs us that Jupiter dwelt on Mount Olympus, when it says: “At that time Jupiter spent the greatest part of his life on Mount Olympus; and they used to resort to him there for the administration of justice, if any matters were disputed. Moreover, if any one had found out any new invention which might be useful for human life, he used to come there and display it to Jupiter.”
29. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.11
(trans. William Fletcher)
Ennius, in his Sacred History, having described all the actions which he [Jupiter] performed in his life, at the close thus speaks: Then Jupiter, when he had five times made a circuit of the earth, and bestowed governments upon all his friends and relatives, and left laws to men, provided them with a settled mode of life and grain, and given them many other benefits, and having been honoured with immortal glory and remembrance, left lasting memorials to his friends, and when his age was almost spent, he changed his life in Crete, and departed to the gods. And the Curetes, his sons, took charge of him, and honoured him; and his tomb is in Crete, in the town of Cnossus, and Vesta is said to have founded this city; and on his tomb is an inscription in ancient Greek characters, “Zan Kronou,” which is in Latin, “Jupiter the son of Saturn.”
29b. Lactantius, Epitome of the Divine Institutes 13
(trans. Jason Colavito)
But let us leave aside the poets: let us come to history, which is based both on both faithful accounts and venerable antiquity. Euhemerus was a Messenian, a very ancient writer, who collected from the sacred inscriptions of ancient temples the origin of Jupiter and his deeds and those of all his offspring; he also traced the parents, homelands, actions, authorities, deaths, and tombs of the other gods. This history Ennius translated into the Latin language, the words of which are these: “This, as written, is the lineage and kinship of Jupiter and his brothers: in this way it has been handed down to us from sacred writing. Therefore the same Euhemerus reports that Jupiter, after having five times circumnavigated the globe and distributed authority to his friends and relatives, and having made laws for men and many other good things, exchanged his life for immortal glory and everlasting memory in Crete and departed to the gods; and that his tomb is in Crete, in the town of Knossos, and on it is written in ancient Greek letters ZAN KRONOU, which is “Jupiter, the son of Saturn.” It is clear, therefore, from what I have related, that he was a man and reigned on earth.
ON ATHENA
30. Hyginus, Astronomica 2.12
(trans. Jason Colavito)
Euhemerus indeed says that the Gorgon was killed by Minerva.
31. Festus, De Verborum Significatione, s.v. Sus Minervam
(trans. Jason Colavito)
“The sow to Minerva”: this is a proverb used when someone teaches another about something of which they themselves are ignorant. This matter, as they say, was placed openly in view, but Varro and Euhemerus preferred to wrap it up in absurd myths rather than report it plainly.
(trans. Jason Colavito)
Euhemerus indeed says that the Gorgon was killed by Minerva.
31. Festus, De Verborum Significatione, s.v. Sus Minervam
(trans. Jason Colavito)
“The sow to Minerva”: this is a proverb used when someone teaches another about something of which they themselves are ignorant. This matter, as they say, was placed openly in view, but Varro and Euhemerus preferred to wrap it up in absurd myths rather than report it plainly.
ON APHRODITE
32a. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.17
(trans. William Fletcher)
And she first instituted the art of courtesanship, as is contained in the Sacred History; and taught women in Cyprus to seek gain by prostitution, which she commanded for this purpose, that she alone might not appear unchaste and a courter of men beyond other females.
32b. Lactantius, Epitome of the Divine Institutes ch. 9
(trans. Jason Colavito)
Venus, exposed to the lusts of gods and men, while reigning in Cyprus, discovered the art of prostitution and commanded women to thus make a living, lest she alone be infamous.
33. Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Heathens, 2.13
(trans. William Wilson)
For I will never be persuaded by that Cyprian Islander Cinyras, who dared to bring forth from night to the light of day the lewd orgies of Aphrodite in his eagerness to deify a strumpet of his own country.
34. Arnobius, Against the Heathen 4.24
(trans. Hamilton Bryce and Hugh Campbell)
Did we say that Venus was a courtesan, deified by a Cyprian king named Cinyras?
35. Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Heathens, 2.14
(trans. William Wilson)
There is then the foam-born and Cyprus-born, the darling of Cinyras — I mean Aphrodite, lover of the virilia, because sprung from them, even from those of Uranus, that were cut off — those lustful members, that, after being cut off, offered violence to the waves. Of members so lewd a worthy fruit — Aphrodite— is born. In the rites which celebrate this enjoyment of the sea, as a symbol of her birth a lump of salt and the phallus are handed to those who are initiated into the art of uncleanness. And those initiated bring a piece of money to her, as a courtesan's paramours do to her.
36. Arnobius, Against the Heathen 5.19
(trans. Hamilton Bryce and Hugh Campbell)
Those hidden mysteries of Cyprian Venus we pass by also, whose founder is said to have been King Cinyras, in which being initiated, they bring stated fees as to a harlot, and carry away phalli, given as signs of the propitious deity.
37. Firmicus Maternus, On the Error of Profane Religions, ch. 10
(trans. Jason Colavito)
I hear that Cinyras of Cyprus gave a temple to his courtesan lover—her name was Venus—and that he even instituted the cult of the Cyprian Venus, assigning many rites to her with empty consecrations. He also established that whoever wished to be initiated into the secrets of Venus should give a single coin to the goddess as a fee. What this secret involves, we must all silently understand, since we cannot explain it more openly because of its shamefulness. A true lover, Cinyras submitted to the laws of prostitutes: he decreed that offerings should be given to Venus by her priests as if to a harlot.
38. Theodoretus, Graecarum affectionum curatio, disp. III, p. 767. ed. Schulze.
(trans. Jason Colavito)
But as for Aphrodite, they say she was not the originator of any good deed, but rather became a teacher of wantonness; for they claim she was a whore and a courtesan, and the lover of Cinyras—and yet they called her a goddess.
39. Hyginus, Astronomica 2.42
(trans. Jason Colavito)
The fifth star is called Stilbon, belonging to Mercury; but it is small and bright. This star is thought to have been given to Mercury because he was the first to establish the months and to observe the courses of the stars.
Euhemerus, however, says that it was Venus who first established the stars and showed them to Mercury.
(trans. William Fletcher)
And she first instituted the art of courtesanship, as is contained in the Sacred History; and taught women in Cyprus to seek gain by prostitution, which she commanded for this purpose, that she alone might not appear unchaste and a courter of men beyond other females.
32b. Lactantius, Epitome of the Divine Institutes ch. 9
(trans. Jason Colavito)
Venus, exposed to the lusts of gods and men, while reigning in Cyprus, discovered the art of prostitution and commanded women to thus make a living, lest she alone be infamous.
33. Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Heathens, 2.13
(trans. William Wilson)
For I will never be persuaded by that Cyprian Islander Cinyras, who dared to bring forth from night to the light of day the lewd orgies of Aphrodite in his eagerness to deify a strumpet of his own country.
34. Arnobius, Against the Heathen 4.24
(trans. Hamilton Bryce and Hugh Campbell)
Did we say that Venus was a courtesan, deified by a Cyprian king named Cinyras?
35. Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Heathens, 2.14
(trans. William Wilson)
There is then the foam-born and Cyprus-born, the darling of Cinyras — I mean Aphrodite, lover of the virilia, because sprung from them, even from those of Uranus, that were cut off — those lustful members, that, after being cut off, offered violence to the waves. Of members so lewd a worthy fruit — Aphrodite— is born. In the rites which celebrate this enjoyment of the sea, as a symbol of her birth a lump of salt and the phallus are handed to those who are initiated into the art of uncleanness. And those initiated bring a piece of money to her, as a courtesan's paramours do to her.
36. Arnobius, Against the Heathen 5.19
(trans. Hamilton Bryce and Hugh Campbell)
Those hidden mysteries of Cyprian Venus we pass by also, whose founder is said to have been King Cinyras, in which being initiated, they bring stated fees as to a harlot, and carry away phalli, given as signs of the propitious deity.
37. Firmicus Maternus, On the Error of Profane Religions, ch. 10
(trans. Jason Colavito)
I hear that Cinyras of Cyprus gave a temple to his courtesan lover—her name was Venus—and that he even instituted the cult of the Cyprian Venus, assigning many rites to her with empty consecrations. He also established that whoever wished to be initiated into the secrets of Venus should give a single coin to the goddess as a fee. What this secret involves, we must all silently understand, since we cannot explain it more openly because of its shamefulness. A true lover, Cinyras submitted to the laws of prostitutes: he decreed that offerings should be given to Venus by her priests as if to a harlot.
38. Theodoretus, Graecarum affectionum curatio, disp. III, p. 767. ed. Schulze.
(trans. Jason Colavito)
But as for Aphrodite, they say she was not the originator of any good deed, but rather became a teacher of wantonness; for they claim she was a whore and a courtesan, and the lover of Cinyras—and yet they called her a goddess.
39. Hyginus, Astronomica 2.42
(trans. Jason Colavito)
The fifth star is called Stilbon, belonging to Mercury; but it is small and bright. This star is thought to have been given to Mercury because he was the first to establish the months and to observe the courses of the stars.
Euhemerus, however, says that it was Venus who first established the stars and showed them to Mercury.
ON ARES
39b. Ampelius, Liber memorialis 9.2
(trans. Jason Colavito)
(This fragment was unknown to Némethy but would likely have followed the discussion of Aphrodite, with whom Ares was sexually involved in myth.)
There were two Marses: the first from Enoposte,* as Euhemerus says, who is our Mars or Marspiter and otherwise Mars Enyus; the second from Jupiter and Juno.
* The reading of this word is uncertain since the manuscript is corrupt.
(trans. Jason Colavito)
(This fragment was unknown to Némethy but would likely have followed the discussion of Aphrodite, with whom Ares was sexually involved in myth.)
There were two Marses: the first from Enoposte,* as Euhemerus says, who is our Mars or Marspiter and otherwise Mars Enyus; the second from Jupiter and Juno.
* The reading of this word is uncertain since the manuscript is corrupt.
ON CADMUS
(From the Third Book)
(From the Third Book)
40. Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists 14
(trans. C. D. Yonge)
Euhemerus the Coan, in the third book of his Sacred History, relates that the Sidonians give this account, that Cadmus was the cook of the king, and that he, having taken Harmonia, who was a female flute-player and also a slave of the king, fled away with her.
(trans. C. D. Yonge)
Euhemerus the Coan, in the third book of his Sacred History, relates that the Sidonians give this account, that Cadmus was the cook of the king, and that he, having taken Harmonia, who was a female flute-player and also a slave of the king, fled away with her.
ON BROTOS
41. Etymologicum Magnum, s.v. Brotos
(trans. Jason Colavito)
Brotos (“mortal”): according to Euhemerus of Messene, [the name comes] from a certain indigenous man named Brotos.
(trans. Jason Colavito)
Brotos (“mortal”): according to Euhemerus of Messene, [the name comes] from a certain indigenous man named Brotos.
ON ATLAS
42. (Reconstructed)
(partly translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence)
“Atlas bore the sky.”
See Diogenianus, Proverbs of the People, Century II, 67: “Atlas the sky – said of those who undertake great burdens or fall into some misfortune.”
In the Bodleian manuscript, the following is added: “Euhemerus, in his Sacred History, added the word ‘bore’ (ὑπεδέξω). It is said of those who have fallen into some misfortune and taken on a great burden.”
(partly translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence)
“Atlas bore the sky.”
See Diogenianus, Proverbs of the People, Century II, 67: “Atlas the sky – said of those who undertake great burdens or fall into some misfortune.”
In the Bodleian manuscript, the following is added: “Euhemerus, in his Sacred History, added the word ‘bore’ (ὑπεδέξω). It is said of those who have fallen into some misfortune and taken on a great burden.”
ON THE JEWS
43. Flavius Josephus, Against Apion 1.23
(trans. William Whiston)
And now certainly the foregoing records of the Egyptians, and Chaldeans, and Phenicians; together with so many of the Greek writers, will be sufficient for the demonstration of our antiquity. Moreover, besides those forementioned, Theophilus, and Theodotus, and Mnaseas, and Aristophanes, and Hermogenes; Euhemerus also, and Conon, and Zopyrion; and perhaps many others; (for I have not light upon all the Greek books) have made distinct mention of us.
(trans. William Whiston)
And now certainly the foregoing records of the Egyptians, and Chaldeans, and Phenicians; together with so many of the Greek writers, will be sufficient for the demonstration of our antiquity. Moreover, besides those forementioned, Theophilus, and Theodotus, and Mnaseas, and Aristophanes, and Hermogenes; Euhemerus also, and Conon, and Zopyrion; and perhaps many others; (for I have not light upon all the Greek books) have made distinct mention of us.
ON THE PYRAMIDS
44. Pliny, Natural History 36.17
(trans. John Bostock and H. T. Riley)
The largest Pyramid is built of stone quarried in Arabia: three hundred and sixty thousand men, it is said, were employed upon it twenty years, and the three were completed in seventy-eight years and four months. They are described by the following writers: Herodotus, Euhemerus, Duris of Samos, Aristagoras, Dionysius, Artemidorus, Alexander Polyhistor, Butoridas, Antisthenes, Demetrius, Demoteles, and Apion.
(trans. John Bostock and H. T. Riley)
The largest Pyramid is built of stone quarried in Arabia: three hundred and sixty thousand men, it is said, were employed upon it twenty years, and the three were completed in seventy-eight years and four months. They are described by the following writers: Herodotus, Euhemerus, Duris of Samos, Aristagoras, Dionysius, Artemidorus, Alexander Polyhistor, Butoridas, Antisthenes, Demetrius, Demoteles, and Apion.
ON GOLD AND GOLD-SMITHING
45a. Pliny, Natural History 7.56
(trans. John Bostock and H. T. Riley)
Gold mines, and the mode of fusing that metal, were discovered by Cadmus, the Phœnician, at the mountain of Pangæus, or, according to other accounts, by Thoas or Eaclis, in Panchaia.
45b Hyginus, Fabulae 274
(trans. Jason Colavito)
Aeacus, the son of Jove, was the first to find gold, in Panchaea, on Mount Tasos.
(The same claim appears, without reference to Panchaea, in Cassiodorus, Miscellany 4.)
(trans. John Bostock and H. T. Riley)
Gold mines, and the mode of fusing that metal, were discovered by Cadmus, the Phœnician, at the mountain of Pangæus, or, according to other accounts, by Thoas or Eaclis, in Panchaia.
45b Hyginus, Fabulae 274
(trans. Jason Colavito)
Aeacus, the son of Jove, was the first to find gold, in Panchaea, on Mount Tasos.
(The same claim appears, without reference to Panchaea, in Cassiodorus, Miscellany 4.)
ON DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE
46. Firmicus Maternus, On the Error of Profane Religions, ch. 7
(trans. Jason Colavito)
(While Maternus referenced Ennius or Euhemerus, modern scholars are uncertain whether Némeny’s supposition that this passage, which euhemerizes, belonged originally to Euhemerus is correct.)
1. There follows this sacred contamination, and an imitation of funeral rites by Ceres, a woman of Henna, consecrated due to the death of her daughter. For everything the father had done for his son in Crete, Ceres, upon losing her daughter, established out of the impatience of motherly grief at Henna. I will briefly summarize how this came about. Ceres had an only daughter, whom the Greeks call Persephone, and whom our people, altering the name, call Proserpina. Many sought her in marriage. Her mother, anxious, judged the merits of each suitor. And while the mother’s opinion still seemed uncertain to all, a wealthy farmer, whose name was Pluto because of his riches, driven by rash desire and unable to endure delay, burning with unnatural passion, seized the maiden—whom he found near Pergus. Pergus is a lake on the border of the city of Henna, very pleasant and charming, its charm arising from the variety of its flowers. For throughout the year it is crowned by ever-changing blooms.
2. There you will find every kind of flower: hyacinths swelling on their stalks, the tresses of narcissus, the golden rose painted above, white ivy creeping softly across the ground, purple violets with gently blushing marjoram, and white lilies that do not desert this garland. Truly, it is a place so graceful that it could both attract and hold a young girl’s heart. It was in this place that the maiden was found near evening by Pluto. She was seized by force, thrown onto a chariot, her garments torn, her hair disheveled, and led away. Neither her scratched hands nor her cries and wailing helped her, nor the commotion of the other girls.
3. Then one of them, swifter from fear, ran to tell the mother of the girl’s abduction, since no one from the city came to help. The mother, outraged against the abductor, led an armed force. But Pluto noticed the woman’s arrival. When he turned his eyes toward the city and saw countless ranks coming with the mother, he made a desperate decision. He drove his chariot—on which the girl was carried—into the middle of the immense lake, which was riven with deep abysses. There he submerged with the beloved maiden, presenting the miserable mother with a dreadful sight of her daughter’s death.
4. The people of Henna, seeking somehow to provide the grieving mother some comfort, fabricated the tale that the king of the underworld had carried off the girl. And to make the fiction believable, they claimed he had re-emerged with the girl in another place near Syracuse. They built a temple to both the abductor and the maiden with diligently collected funds, and decreed annual offerings in the temple. But no ritual could overcome the mother’s grief, nor could the torments of feminine impatience be soothed. Believing that her daughter had indeed been seen near Syracuse, she traveled with Triptolemus, her steward, by night journeys to the shore of Syracuse, wearing garments of mourning and in wretched disarray. There, too, was someone ready to deceive the grieving mother. He said that he, Pandarus or someone, had seen the abductor board a ship with the girl not far from Pachynus. The woman was convinced—because she longed to hear that her daughter lived by any means—and lavishly rewarded the city with countless gifts.
5. The Syracusans, stirred by the woman’s generosity, consecrated the abduction of the maiden and, trying to ease the mother’s grief, adorned the procession of that wretched funeral with the honor of temples. But even this did not suffice for the mother. She boarded a ship and searched for her daughter along foreign shores. After being tossed by waves and storms, she arrived at a place in the land of Attica. There, taken in by the inhabitants, she shared unknown grain with them. The place took its name from her homeland and her arrival, for it was called Eleusis, because Ceres had come there after leaving Henna.
6. Thus, having distributed the grain she had brought and taught the discipline of harvesting crops, she was after her death buried in that place, and consecrated as a goddess together with her daughter, and was called by a divine name.
(trans. Jason Colavito)
(While Maternus referenced Ennius or Euhemerus, modern scholars are uncertain whether Némeny’s supposition that this passage, which euhemerizes, belonged originally to Euhemerus is correct.)
1. There follows this sacred contamination, and an imitation of funeral rites by Ceres, a woman of Henna, consecrated due to the death of her daughter. For everything the father had done for his son in Crete, Ceres, upon losing her daughter, established out of the impatience of motherly grief at Henna. I will briefly summarize how this came about. Ceres had an only daughter, whom the Greeks call Persephone, and whom our people, altering the name, call Proserpina. Many sought her in marriage. Her mother, anxious, judged the merits of each suitor. And while the mother’s opinion still seemed uncertain to all, a wealthy farmer, whose name was Pluto because of his riches, driven by rash desire and unable to endure delay, burning with unnatural passion, seized the maiden—whom he found near Pergus. Pergus is a lake on the border of the city of Henna, very pleasant and charming, its charm arising from the variety of its flowers. For throughout the year it is crowned by ever-changing blooms.
2. There you will find every kind of flower: hyacinths swelling on their stalks, the tresses of narcissus, the golden rose painted above, white ivy creeping softly across the ground, purple violets with gently blushing marjoram, and white lilies that do not desert this garland. Truly, it is a place so graceful that it could both attract and hold a young girl’s heart. It was in this place that the maiden was found near evening by Pluto. She was seized by force, thrown onto a chariot, her garments torn, her hair disheveled, and led away. Neither her scratched hands nor her cries and wailing helped her, nor the commotion of the other girls.
3. Then one of them, swifter from fear, ran to tell the mother of the girl’s abduction, since no one from the city came to help. The mother, outraged against the abductor, led an armed force. But Pluto noticed the woman’s arrival. When he turned his eyes toward the city and saw countless ranks coming with the mother, he made a desperate decision. He drove his chariot—on which the girl was carried—into the middle of the immense lake, which was riven with deep abysses. There he submerged with the beloved maiden, presenting the miserable mother with a dreadful sight of her daughter’s death.
4. The people of Henna, seeking somehow to provide the grieving mother some comfort, fabricated the tale that the king of the underworld had carried off the girl. And to make the fiction believable, they claimed he had re-emerged with the girl in another place near Syracuse. They built a temple to both the abductor and the maiden with diligently collected funds, and decreed annual offerings in the temple. But no ritual could overcome the mother’s grief, nor could the torments of feminine impatience be soothed. Believing that her daughter had indeed been seen near Syracuse, she traveled with Triptolemus, her steward, by night journeys to the shore of Syracuse, wearing garments of mourning and in wretched disarray. There, too, was someone ready to deceive the grieving mother. He said that he, Pandarus or someone, had seen the abductor board a ship with the girl not far from Pachynus. The woman was convinced—because she longed to hear that her daughter lived by any means—and lavishly rewarded the city with countless gifts.
5. The Syracusans, stirred by the woman’s generosity, consecrated the abduction of the maiden and, trying to ease the mother’s grief, adorned the procession of that wretched funeral with the honor of temples. But even this did not suffice for the mother. She boarded a ship and searched for her daughter along foreign shores. After being tossed by waves and storms, she arrived at a place in the land of Attica. There, taken in by the inhabitants, she shared unknown grain with them. The place took its name from her homeland and her arrival, for it was called Eleusis, because Ceres had come there after leaving Henna.
6. Thus, having distributed the grain she had brought and taught the discipline of harvesting crops, she was after her death buried in that place, and consecrated as a goddess together with her daughter, and was called by a divine name.
A FRAGMENT OF UNCERTAIN ORIGIN
47. Varro, On Agriculture 1.48
(trans. W. D. Hooper and H. B. Ash)
‘Beard’ and ‘grain’ are familiar words to most people, but ‘husk’ (gluma) to few; thus the only place where it occurs, to my knowledge, is in Ennius, in his translation of Euhemerus.
(trans. W. D. Hooper and H. B. Ash)
‘Beard’ and ‘grain’ are familiar words to most people, but ‘husk’ (gluma) to few; thus the only place where it occurs, to my knowledge, is in Ennius, in his translation of Euhemerus.
NARRATIVES THAT ARE PROBABLY TO BE ATTRIBUTED TO EUHEMERUS
The heading belongs to Némethy. Modern scholars are uncertain about the true connection of these fragments to Euhemerus, though the texts are clearly euhemeristic by an author known to have used material from Euhemerus or Ennius without attribution.
48. Firmicus Maternus, On the Error of Profane Religions, ch. 6
(trans. Jason Colavito)
1. But there still remain other superstitions whose secrets must be revealed: those of Liber and Libera, which must be explained especially to your sacred intelligence, so that you may recognize that even in these profane religions the deaths of human beings have been consecrated.
Liber, then, was the son of Jupiter, that is, of the king of Crete. He was born of an adulterous mother, and was raised by his father with more care than was appropriate. The wife of Jupiter, whose name was Juno, driven by the fury of a stepmother’s hatred, planned by every means to kill the child.
2. While the father was traveling abroad, knowing his wife’s silent indignation and fearing that the angry woman might act deceitfully, he entrusted the protection of his son to guards whom he thought trustworthy. Then Juno, finding the perfect time for her plot—and all the more inflamed because the father, upon leaving, had given the boy the throne and scepter—first bribed the guardians with royal gifts and rewards. Then she placed her henchmen, who were called Titans, in the inner chambers of the palace. With toys and a finely crafted mirror, they so enticed the boy’s childish mind that he left the royal quarters and was led by desire to the place of ambush.
3. There he was seized and slaughtered. So that no trace of the murder could be found, the crowd of henchmen cut his limbs into pieces and divided them among themselves. Then, to add another crime to this atrocity—because the cruelty of the tyrant (the father) was greatly feared—they cooked the boy’s limbs in various ways and ate them, consuming human flesh in a feast unheard of until that day. The heart was kept by his sister, whose name was Minerva, who had also taken part in the crime, both as a clear sign of her betrayal and as a means to calm her father’s rage. When Jupiter returned, the daughter revealed the details of the crime.
4. Then the father, stricken with the calamity of this terrible loss and the horror of such cruel grief, killed the Titans, torturing them in many ways. In avenging his son, he omitted no torment or punishment, and through all kinds of torture he exacted revenge, with a father’s affection but a tyrant’s power. Then, because he could no longer endure the torment of his mourning heart, and because the pain from his loss could not be eased by any comfort, he had a likeness of the boy made in plaster, formed by the sculptor’s art, and placed the boy’s heart—revealed by the sister as the key to the crime—inside the chest of the figure, where the features of the breast had been formed. After this, he built a temple as a tomb and appointed the boy’s tutor as priest.
5. This man’s name was Silenus. The Cretans, wishing to appease the fury of the raging tyrant, established funeral festivals and arranged an annual sacred rite with triennial consecration. They performed everything in proper order that the boy had done or suffered in life: they tear a living bull to pieces with their teeth, re-enacting the cruel feast with annual commemorations; and in the secret places of the woods, they howl with discordant cries to mimic the madness of a frenzied mind—so that the crime might be believed not to have been committed through malice, but through insanity. They carry a chest in which the sister had secretly hidden the heart, and they recreate the music of flutes and the clashing of cymbals—the same toys that had deceived the child. And so, in honor of the tyrant, the serving masses deified someone who had not even received a burial.
49. Firmicus Maternus, On the Error of Profane Religions, ch. 6
(trans. Jason Colavito)
6. There was also another Liber at Thebes—a tyrant, renowned for his power in the magical arts. After he had ensnared women’s minds with certain poisons and incantations, he commanded them, in their madness, to commit cruel crimes at his will, so that he might have noblewomen—driven mad—as agents of both his lusts and his crimes. What sort of wicked deeds he committed, and to what extent he forced mothers against their sons and sisters against their brothers, is recounted daily on stage by the authors of tragic verse, so that the criminal cruelty of this wicked tyrant might be reborn in the minds of listeners through these grim retellings.
7. Lycurgus, protected by an alliance of sober men, drove him from the throne and expelled him from his homeland—for the effeminate man could no longer endure the will of upright men. For it is sung in Greek gymnasiums that he was effeminate and served the lusts of his male lovers. Nor was Lycurgus satisfied merely with driving him into exile. Fearing that, as a fugitive, he might be received elsewhere and plant the seeds of his disgraceful crimes in another region, Lycurgus, girded with a sword, pursued him with a threatening decree to rid the homeland of shame. Then Liber, casting off the sacred headbands which he had bound with wreaths of vine leaves, fled with his half-man entourage—for only the companions of his debauchery, depravity, and lust followed him—and wandered, in utmost terror and desperation, along the shores of the nearby sea.
8. There, among drunken girls and wine-soaked old men—while he was still preceded by the parade of his crimes—one appeared hideous in black garments, another terrifying with a visible snake, another with a bloodied mouth as he tore the limbs of a living animal. Lycurgus seized him and hurled him from the nearest cliff, which plunged steeply into the sea and was made impassable by jagged rocks, so that his mangled body, tossed for a long time by the sea waves, might, through this harsh punishment, turn the minds of wandering peoples back to the order of sanity and sobriety.
48. Firmicus Maternus, On the Error of Profane Religions, ch. 6
(trans. Jason Colavito)
1. But there still remain other superstitions whose secrets must be revealed: those of Liber and Libera, which must be explained especially to your sacred intelligence, so that you may recognize that even in these profane religions the deaths of human beings have been consecrated.
Liber, then, was the son of Jupiter, that is, of the king of Crete. He was born of an adulterous mother, and was raised by his father with more care than was appropriate. The wife of Jupiter, whose name was Juno, driven by the fury of a stepmother’s hatred, planned by every means to kill the child.
2. While the father was traveling abroad, knowing his wife’s silent indignation and fearing that the angry woman might act deceitfully, he entrusted the protection of his son to guards whom he thought trustworthy. Then Juno, finding the perfect time for her plot—and all the more inflamed because the father, upon leaving, had given the boy the throne and scepter—first bribed the guardians with royal gifts and rewards. Then she placed her henchmen, who were called Titans, in the inner chambers of the palace. With toys and a finely crafted mirror, they so enticed the boy’s childish mind that he left the royal quarters and was led by desire to the place of ambush.
3. There he was seized and slaughtered. So that no trace of the murder could be found, the crowd of henchmen cut his limbs into pieces and divided them among themselves. Then, to add another crime to this atrocity—because the cruelty of the tyrant (the father) was greatly feared—they cooked the boy’s limbs in various ways and ate them, consuming human flesh in a feast unheard of until that day. The heart was kept by his sister, whose name was Minerva, who had also taken part in the crime, both as a clear sign of her betrayal and as a means to calm her father’s rage. When Jupiter returned, the daughter revealed the details of the crime.
4. Then the father, stricken with the calamity of this terrible loss and the horror of such cruel grief, killed the Titans, torturing them in many ways. In avenging his son, he omitted no torment or punishment, and through all kinds of torture he exacted revenge, with a father’s affection but a tyrant’s power. Then, because he could no longer endure the torment of his mourning heart, and because the pain from his loss could not be eased by any comfort, he had a likeness of the boy made in plaster, formed by the sculptor’s art, and placed the boy’s heart—revealed by the sister as the key to the crime—inside the chest of the figure, where the features of the breast had been formed. After this, he built a temple as a tomb and appointed the boy’s tutor as priest.
5. This man’s name was Silenus. The Cretans, wishing to appease the fury of the raging tyrant, established funeral festivals and arranged an annual sacred rite with triennial consecration. They performed everything in proper order that the boy had done or suffered in life: they tear a living bull to pieces with their teeth, re-enacting the cruel feast with annual commemorations; and in the secret places of the woods, they howl with discordant cries to mimic the madness of a frenzied mind—so that the crime might be believed not to have been committed through malice, but through insanity. They carry a chest in which the sister had secretly hidden the heart, and they recreate the music of flutes and the clashing of cymbals—the same toys that had deceived the child. And so, in honor of the tyrant, the serving masses deified someone who had not even received a burial.
49. Firmicus Maternus, On the Error of Profane Religions, ch. 6
(trans. Jason Colavito)
6. There was also another Liber at Thebes—a tyrant, renowned for his power in the magical arts. After he had ensnared women’s minds with certain poisons and incantations, he commanded them, in their madness, to commit cruel crimes at his will, so that he might have noblewomen—driven mad—as agents of both his lusts and his crimes. What sort of wicked deeds he committed, and to what extent he forced mothers against their sons and sisters against their brothers, is recounted daily on stage by the authors of tragic verse, so that the criminal cruelty of this wicked tyrant might be reborn in the minds of listeners through these grim retellings.
7. Lycurgus, protected by an alliance of sober men, drove him from the throne and expelled him from his homeland—for the effeminate man could no longer endure the will of upright men. For it is sung in Greek gymnasiums that he was effeminate and served the lusts of his male lovers. Nor was Lycurgus satisfied merely with driving him into exile. Fearing that, as a fugitive, he might be received elsewhere and plant the seeds of his disgraceful crimes in another region, Lycurgus, girded with a sword, pursued him with a threatening decree to rid the homeland of shame. Then Liber, casting off the sacred headbands which he had bound with wreaths of vine leaves, fled with his half-man entourage—for only the companions of his debauchery, depravity, and lust followed him—and wandered, in utmost terror and desperation, along the shores of the nearby sea.
8. There, among drunken girls and wine-soaked old men—while he was still preceded by the parade of his crimes—one appeared hideous in black garments, another terrifying with a visible snake, another with a bloodied mouth as he tore the limbs of a living animal. Lycurgus seized him and hurled him from the nearest cliff, which plunged steeply into the sea and was made impassable by jagged rocks, so that his mangled body, tossed for a long time by the sea waves, might, through this harsh punishment, turn the minds of wandering peoples back to the order of sanity and sobriety.
Source: Geyza Némethy, Euhemeri reliquae (Budapest: Kiadja a Magyar Tud. Akadémia, 1889), 30-70.
