Eugippius, or Eugyppius, a learned monk, who lived at the close of the lifth and the beginning of the sixth century. He seems to have been the descend- ant of an Italian famil}^, and was at iirst monk in the monastery of St. Severin (q. v.) at Fariana, in Noricum (near the present Pochlarn, in Austi'ia), subsequently in the monastery of Castrum Lucullanum (now Cas- tello del Novo, belonging to the city of Naples). He is sometimes called " abbot," but it is doubtful wheth- er he was, in the later j'ears of his life, a1)bot of Lu- cullanum, or whether tlie name was only given him as an honorary title. He is the author of a life of his teacher, St. Severinus (Vita St. Sevei-ini., publ. b}' Ca- nisius,^?(<ig'. Lect. t. vi, in Acta Sancioruiii, Jan. 8; and by Welser, Augsb. 1594), which is a very important contribution to the Church history of Germany. He also compiled a collection of Thoughts and Sentences from the works of St. Augustine (Thesaurus Aiigiisliii- ianeus (Basle, 1542 ; Venice, 1543), which was dedica- ted to tlie Ivoman virgin Proba. The author of the second work was formerly believed by some writers to be a different person from the author of the life of St. Severin, but this opinion has now been generally aban- doned. Among the letters of Fulgentius (q. v.) of Kuspe, there is one addressed to Eugippius ; a letter of Eugippius to Fulgentius is lost. Eugippius was also in literary connection with Dionjsius Exiguus. Tiiere is a monastic rule which is ascribed to Eugip- pius, but it was early superseded by that of St. Bene- dict.—Ilerzog, Real-Encyldop. iv, 217. (A. J. S.)
Euhemerus, a Greek historian, philosopher, and traveller, lived about the year B.C. 300. It is not ex- actlj' known whether lie was born at ^lessina (in Sici- ly), at Tegea (in the Peloponnesus), on the isle of Cos, or at Agrigentum. He belonged to the Cyrenaic school, well known for its scepticism in religious matters. As bold as the other philosophers of this school, and more sj^stematic, Euhemerus proposed a general inter- pretation of the mj'ths, which has been justly com- pared with modern German nationalism. An exposi- tion of his doctrine is given bj' Diodorus Siculus. "Euhemerus," he says, "friend of Cassander (king of Macedonia B.C. 320-206), was intrusted by this prince with certain missions to some of the Southern
countries. On his way he passed in the Indian Ocean a group of isles, of which the largest was called Pan- chaia. The Panchaans were distinguished for their piety, and honored the gods by sacrifice and offerings of gold and silver." They worshipped Jupiter, and such other gods as we meet with in Grecian mytholo- gy ; but all these gods were really men distinguished for great actions, and deified on account of them. On his return from the voyage Euhemerus wrote a Sacred iristoiy (lepa uvaypafpif), in about nine books, in which he showed, according to Lactantius and Arnobius, that these gods w^ere but men (Lactantius, De Falsa Relig- ione, i, 11). A Latin translation was made by the poet Ennius. Of this translation only ninety-iive lines now remain (Amsterdam, 1707). This work contains the history of the gods of the Panchasans, of the people and their manners, Euhemerus himself leaning in fact to the doctrines of the PanchaBans. The form in which he presented his system was not entirely new, for Pla- to had adopted a similar course in his Repuhlic ; the germ of the S3'stem itself is to be found in some pas- sages of Herodotus and Thucydides. The originality of Euhemerus consists in exaggerating, and in carry- ing out even to absurdity, the idea that jNIythology contains certain historical elements. In effect, he re- solved all mj'tholog}' into history, maintaining tliat the gods "were originally illustrious kings, deified af- ter death either by the spontaneous reverence of the people or by the cunning of the rulers." But mytholo- gy contains, aside from this, so much that bears on as- tronomy, the physical sciences, metaphj'sics, and, most of all, so much of fiction, that it is next to impossible to determine what in this confusion is truly historical. Some historians, like Diodorus Siculus, who have at- tempted to interpret mythologj' after the plan of Eu- hemerus, have succeeded onlj^ in substituting prosaic fiction for the imaginative popular legends. The pa- gan writers generally treat Euhemerus with severit}\ After the origin of Christianitj', the views of Euheme- rus, as containing the satires of a pagan on pagan re- ligions, were made great use of in argument by the Church fathers against paganism, with some exagger- ations, perhaps, of the doctrines of Euhemerus. Ter- tullian, Clement of Alexandria, Minucius Felix, Cyp- rian, Lactantius, Chrysostom, in arguing against pa- ganism, adopt the view of Euhemerus, that the wor- ship of great men was the original source of all idola- try, and gave birth to all the pagan divinities. In 1641,Vossius, following an idea of Tertullian, sought to show that the gods of paganism were tlie patriarchs of the 0. T. : Serapis was Joseph ; Janus, Noah ; Mi- nerva, Naomi, etc. Huet, bishop of A\Tanches, dis- covered Moses in Osiris and Bacchus, as Avell as in many other pagan divinities. Euhemerism, as a meth- od of interpreting the ancient mythology, was sup- planted by the symbolism of Kreuzer, a system infi- nitelj' superior to the other two above mentioned, but still containing much that is illusory and erroneous. — Hoefer, Nouv. Biogr. Genirale, xvi, 828; Donaldson, History of Christian Literature and Doctrine (see In- dex) ; G(^x\a.ch,Historische Studien (Hamb. 1841, 8vo) ; Lecky, History of Rationalism, i, 327 ; Brucker, Hist. Crit.'Philosop'him, i, G04 sq. ; Clinton, Fasti Hel/enici (Oxon. 1830), ii, 481 ; Jleiners, Hist. Doct. ajntd Gnp- cos, ii, GG4 sq. ; Fabricius, Bihliotheca Graca, iii, 616; Hoffman, Bibliographisches Lexikon, i, 65; Milman, History of Christianity (New York, 1866), i, 49, note. See Mythology.