As we already commented in previous articles (those dedicated to Sanjuniatón and Megasthenes) many lost works of Antiquity can be reconstructed to a great extent thanks to the extensive quotations of them found in later authors. Another of these cases is the Historical Library of Diodorus of Sicily, Greek historian of the 1st century BC. Of the 40 volumes of his work, the first five books and numbers X through XX have reached us complete. Only fragments remain of the rest, which can be traced in the writings of Photius and other authors of early Christianity.
The one that interests us here is Book VI, because in it Diodorus collects part of the work of an earlier author named Euhemerus of Messina, who lived between 330 and 250 BC. There we find this paragraph (via the Chronicle of John of Antioch):
Strange statement. Wasn't Zeus an immortal god? Yes and no, depending on how you look at it. Diodorus resolves the issue by showing that
What he is explaining is precisely the theory of Euhemerus of Messina, a hermeneutical current known today as Evhemerism and that it already had a precedent in the sophist Prodicus of Ceos (465-395 BC), a contemporary of Socrates. Both claimed that the gods were nothing more than men who, by their acts, achieved such fame and renown that they became deified, and their history altered and exaggerated with the passage of time.
Euhemerus lived at the court of Cassander, King of Macedonia between 301 and 297 BC, where he must have held a position related to diplomacy, as Eusebius of Caesarea recounts in his Praeparatio evangelica (II 2, 59b–61a) citing Diodorus.
It is not very clear if Evémero's trip really took place or if it is just a fiction invented with a philosophical character to expose his theories. After those trips, which would have taken Euhemerus to the Indian Ocean through Arabia, he would return to Alexandria following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, and there he wrote the account of his journey entitled Hierà anagraphé (Ἱερὰ ἀναγραφή, translated into Spanish as Sacred Inscription ).
This is the lost work of Euhemerus cited by Diodorus. It is known that there was a Latin translation by Quintus Ennius (239–169 BC, considered the first great Roman epic poet), also lost, but fragments of it have been traced in the work Institutiones divinae of the Christian apologist Lactantius (c.245–325 AD). Augustine of Hippo also cites fragments of Euhemerus's text.
Why would so many Christian authors bother to quote Euhemerus so extensively? The above passage is a fragment of his work collected by Diodorus and which has come down to us through Eusebius. It contains the clue to understand why the matter interested them so much:Euhemerus would have found proof that both Zeus and Cronos, Uranus and the other pagan gods had been nothing more than mortal men. On that utopian (or not) island of Panchea he had seen a golden column in a temple of Zeus where the record of the births and deaths of many gods was inscribed.
Actually what Evémero was trying to explain the myths, find the hidden meaning in them, which for him was of a historical and social nature. Ultimately, he rationalize mythology in historical terms. Later philosophers would bear witness to this theory, such as Hume and Voltaire, who even wrote some Dialogues with Euhemerus .
But earlier, in 1220, the Icelandic bard Snorri Sturluson (who was a Christian) also offered an evemerist explanation. of the Norse gods. In his Prose Edda he proposes that they were nothing more than historical leaders and kings. He claims that Odin was born in Asia Minor, a descendant of the Trojan king Priam, and recounts his journey to the Norse lands: