ith the fact that
Euhemerus was generally characterised as an atheist.

The theory that the gods were at first men was not originated by
Euhemerus, though it takes its name (Euhemerism) from him. The theory had
some support in the popular faith which recognised gods (Heracles,
Asclepius) who had lived as men on earth; and the opinion which was
fundamental to Greek religion, that the gods had _come into existence_,
and had not existed from eternity, would favour this theory. Moreover,
Euhemerus had had an immediate precursor in the slightly earlier Hecataeus
of Abdera, who had set forth a similar theory, with the difference,
however, that he took the view that all excellent men became real gods.
But Euhemerus's theory appeared just at the right moment and fell on
fertile soil. Alexander the Great and his successors had adopted the
Oriental policy by which the ruler was worshipped as a god, and were
supported in this by a tendency which had already made itself felt
occasionally among the Greeks in the East. Euhemerus only inverted
matters--if the rulers were gods, it was an obvious inference that the gods
were rulers. No wonder that his theory gained a large following. Its great
influence is seen from numerous similar attempts in the Hellenistic world.
At Rome, in the second century, Ennius translated his works into Latin,
and as late as the time of Augustus an author such as Diodorus, in his
popular history of the world, served up Euhemerism as the best scientific
explanation of the origin of religion. It is characteristic, too, that
both Jews and Christians, in their attacks on Paganism, reckoned with
Euhemerism as a well-established theory. As every one knows, it has
survived to our day; Carlyle, I suppose, being its last prominent
exponent.

It is characteristic of Euhemerism in its most radical form that it
assumed that the gods of polytheism did not exist; so far it is atheism.
But it is no less characteristic that it made the concession to popular
belief that its gods had once existed. Hereby it takes its place, in spite
of its greater radicalism, on the same plane with most other ancient
theories about the origin of men's notions about the gods. The gods of
popular belief could not survive in the light of ancient thought, which in
its essence was free-thought, not tied down by dogmas. But the
philosophers of old could not but believe that a psychological fact of
such enormous dimensions as ancient polytheism must