CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN LITERATURE AND ART 669longs to Locrian Arsinoë, and he lifted me up and flew off through the dark up-
per air and placed me in the chaste lap of Venus.
It would take a learned reader to understand that the "twin of Memnon" is
the West Wind, here identified with the winged horse Pegasus. Pegasus is made
the servant of Arsinoë, wife of King Ptolemy II, who after her death was deified
as Aphrodite Zephyritis (her title coming from the place Zephyrium, but pun-
ningly interpreted to mean "having power over Zephyrus," that is, able to send
the West Wind on errands).
The Alexandrians and their Roman followers were not always so ingenious
in their allusions. Catullus himself created the finest narrative of the myth of
Ariadne and Theseus in his sixty-fourth poem, and the Alexandrian taste for ro-
mantic detail was brilliantly united with mythological narrative in the Meta-
morphoses of Ovid, the master storyteller.
Thus the myths enjoyed a revival in the Alexandrian tradition, which at its
best led to entertaining and often moving narratives, and at its worst to a par-
alyzing use of ingenious allusion. In art also, the search for ingenious expres-
sion of a particular emotion, or for a particular effect on the viewer, led to works
such as the Hermes of Praxiteles, whose technical brilliance should be compared
with the dignity of the Apollo of the temple of Zeus at Olympia. The Demeter of
Cnidus, however, dating from the later part of the fourth century, showed that
artists could still represent the majesty of the Olympian gods (see page 308).
In the thousand years between the rise of Alexandrianism and the early Mid-
dle Ages (i.e., ca. 300 B.C. to A.D. 700) the survival of classical mythology was en-
sured both by the uses to which it was put and by its critics. We discuss four of
these modes of survival: (1) Euhemerism; (2) mythographers and handbooks;
(3) astronomy and astrology; and (4) pagan and Christian critics.
EUHEMERISM
The work of Euhemerus of Messene (ca. 300 B.c.), which achieved an influence
out of all proportion to its merits, took a different approach to the traditional
myths. The theory of Euhemerism states that the gods were originally men who
had been kings or otherwise distinguished men. Euhemerus claimed in his book
The Sacred Scripture to have journeyed to the Indian Ocean and, on an island
there, to have seen a golden column in the temple of Zeus, upon which were in-
scribed the deeds of Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus. From this he discovered that
the gods were human beings deified for their great deeds. Euhemerus' book was
translated into Latin by Ennius (ca. 180) and summarized in Greek by the his-
torian Diodorus Siculus (ca. 30); Ennius' version was summarized by the Chris-
tian writer Lactantius (ca. A.D. 300).
Euhemerism owed its importance in the Christian era to the fact that it pro-
vided pagan material with which to attack the pagan gods. St. Augustine, writ-
ing around A.D. 415, explained the errors of pagan religion "most reasonably,"