EUHEM'ERISM. The name usually applied to the theory which seeks to explain all my thology as distorted history. The name is derived from Euhemerus Etbjpepos, ) of ilessana in Sicily, who was a contemporary and friend of Cassander of Macedon (inc. 311-298). Sent by the King on a voyage to the south, he utilized his travels to bring his theory before the world. In his Sacred Record. (Gk. /cp.& dpaypacbh ) he described the habits and government found on an island, Pancluea, in the Indian Ocean. This enabled him to set forth his view of an ideal State. Ile endeavored to show that the Greek god.; were merely men, who had been deified he eau-se of their power or services to mankind. lie was not the first to suggest this interpretation. as it had already been applied to various myths of the heroes connected with early Grecian his tory by such writers as Hecatfrus and Ephoims; but he carried it far beyond any previous writer in the universality of its application even to the gods. Naturally. and probably with full justice, the book brought upon its author the name of Atheist, though. its obviously ficti tious character, it is hard to see why he should have been branded as a .deceiver. Many of the
later writers adopted his views, and to Many of the early Christian apologists his work was a welcome storehouse of material for use in their attacks upon the heathen divinities. The theory has had defenders from the days of its founder to the present time. ln the eighteenth century it was made prominent by Baffler's La -my thologic et les fables expligi'e par Bhistoire.
(Paris, 1738), and with some admixture of the allegorizing tendency is found in those writers who endeavored to interpret Greek legends as a derivation from the biblical narrative, as in the area Now of Athanasius Kircher and others— a method which survived long, and is found even in 1893 in the Revue d'eseg•se mythologique of the Ablal Fourier. Some elements of Euheme rism may also be attributed to those theories which see the origin of all mythologies, and even all religious emotions, in the worship of ancestors and spirits of the dead. Consult: Sieroka, De Euhemero (KlInigsberg, 1868) : meri. Religniee (Budapest, 1889) ; Susemihl, Gesehiehte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit, 1'01. i. (Leipzig, 1891).