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It is a remarkable indication of the expressed and conscious antagonism between religion and the new philosophy that Ennius already translated into Latin those notoriously destructive writings of Epicharmus and Euhemerus.
It appears from the accounts that Euhemerus supposed the heavenly bodies to be real and eternal gods—he thought that Uranos had first taught men to worship them; further, as his theory is generally understood, it must be assumed that in his opinion the other gods had ceased to exist as such after their death. This accords with the fact that Euhemerus was generally characterised as an atheist.
Euhemerus, whom our Ennius translated, and followed more than other authors, has particularly advanced this doctrine, and treated of the deaths and burials of the Gods; can he, then, be said to have confirmed religion, or, rather, to have totally subverted it?
"Leviter curare videtur Quo promissa caadant et somnia Pythagorea." At the same time he studied the Epicurean system, and in particular, the doctrines of Euhemerus, whose work on the origin of the gods he translated. His denial of Divine Providence is well known "Ego deum genus esse dixi et dicam semper caelitum: Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus.
About the same time there appeared a writer, outside the circle of philosophers, who is regularly listed among the atheoi, and who has given a name to a peculiar theory about the origin of the idea of the gods, namely, Euhemerus. He is said to have travelled extensively in the service of King Cassander of Macedonia.
It could not indeed venture on open attacks, and such direct additions as were made by its means to religious conceptions e.g. the Pater Caelus formed by Ennius from the Roman Saturnus in imitation of the Greek Uranos were, while Hellenistic, of no great importance. But the diffusion of the doctrines of Epichar and Euhemerus in Rome was fraught with momentous consequences.
The system of Epicurus, which converts the universe into a great vortex of atoms and undertakes to explain the origin and end of the world as well as all the problems of nature and of life in a purely mechanical way, was doubtless somewhat less silly than the conversion of myths into history which was attempted by Euhemerus and after him by Ennius; but it was not an ingenious or a fresh system, and the task of poetically unfolding this mechanical view of the world was of such a nature that never probably did poet expend life and art on a more ungrateful theme.
But Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad stand on a very different footing from Krishna and Athena, even if we concede the view of some scholars that Krishna was once a man, and the contention of Euhemerus, a pre-Christian Greek, that all the gods had once been human. If we posit that Jesus did not exist, we shall be involved other difficulties as to the story of the Church. Mr.
Thus we arrive at the following list, in which those who were denoted as atheoi are italicised and those who were accused of impiety are marked with an asterisk: Xenophanes. *Anaxagoras. Diogenes of Apollonia. Hippo of Rhegium. *Protagoras. Prodicus. Critias. *Diagoras of Melos. *Socrates. Antisthenes. Plato. *Aristotle. Theophrastus. *Stilpo. *Theodorus. *Bion. Epicurus. Euhemerus.
In the old religion of Greece and Western Asia, she begins as a Maiden, then in fullness of time becomes a mother. Almost all the writers of the Hellenistic Age agree in regarding the Sun, Moon, and Stars as gods. The rationalists Hecataeus and Euhemerus, before going on to their deified men, always start with the heavenly bodies.
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