themselves: ‘Now, if _I_ had told such a tale as this, or invented such a mystery play of divine misadventures, what meaning could _I_ have intended to convey in what is apparently blasphemous nonsense?’”[353] It will be seen that Plutarch does not himself finally adopt any special interpretation, although he emphatically rejects those which are not pious as well as philosophic. He is desirous rather of showing in what way the investigation of such questions should be approached, than of imposing any definite conclusion on the understanding; of cultivating an aptitude for rational and reverent inquiry, than of establishing a final and inflexible dogma. He deals first with the Euhemerists, or “Exanthropizers.” Euhemerus of Tegea, or, as Plutarch here calls him, Euhemerus[354] of Messene, first treated with scientific precision that tendency to regard the gods as kings and rulers whose surpassing greatness and merit had been rewarded by an imaginary apotheosis. He had embodied the result of his researches, which he claims to have made during an expedition sent by Cassander to the Red Sea, in a work called the “Sacred Record.” He asserted, according to Lactantius, that he had seen in the Island of Panchaia (Plutarch calls it _Panchon_) a column of gold with an inscription indicating its erection by Zeus himself, _in qua columna gesta sua perscripsit ut monimentum esset posteris rerum suarum_. This “humanizing” of Zeus was extended to other deities; and Plutarch, who sarcastically denies that these inscriptions had ever been seen by anybody else, whether Greek or Barbarian, asserts that the principles of Euhemerus had been applied to the explanation of the tombs and other monuments commemorating in Egypt the events embodied in the Osirian myth. Although it has been asserted that Euhemerus admitted the existence of the elemental deities, such as the sun and the heavens, the atheistical tendency of his theory is evident, and the author of the tract “De Placitis Philosophorum,” whose bias is distinctly Epicurean and atheistic, says that Euhemerus absolutely denied the existence of the gods, associating him in this connexion with Diagoras the Melian, and Theodorus of Cyrene.[355] Plutarch himself has no doubts as to the tendency of Euhemerism. Those who have recourse to these theories,“transferring great names from heaven to earth, almost entirely uproot and destroy the reverence and faith implanted in all of us at our birth, and open wide the temple doors to the profane and atheistical mob.”[356]—“They bring divinity to the level of humanity, and fair occasion of unfettered speech to the impostures of Euhemerus, who scattered Atheism the wide world over, degrading all the recognized deities alike to the names of generals, admirals, kings of a pretended eld.” Good and great kings are rewarded with the gratitude of posterity, while disgrace and obloquy have been the portion of those whose insolence has led them to assume the titles and temples of