24. Kerkhecker 1999, 25.
25. See, e.g., Feeney 1991, 6–8, especially 7 (“This type of poetry is a πλάσμα, depicting not something real or actual, but something fabricated”).
26. The details are sketchy: see L.-L. O’Sullivan 1997, 142–46; more fully on the evidence for Theodorus’s life, Winiarczyk 1981 (largely a study in uncertainty).
27. If Theodorus really was the author of the Sacred Inscription, then the reascription from him to “Euhemerus” will have happened early on. By the time of Arnobius, Adv. Nat. 4.29 (T21 Winiarczyk), certainly, Euhemerus and Theodorus are classed separately in the list of atheists. Theodorus’s most famous work, On the Gods, is unlikely to have been the Inscription; this would be incompatible with the assertion of Diogenes Laertius (who claims to have read it and found it “not contemptible”) that “Epicurus is said to have taken most of his ideas from it” (2.97; see Winiarczyk 1981, 84, on this passage, arguing against emendation of Epicurus to Euhemerus). Winiarczyk 1981, 84–85, speculates on the nature of On the Gods, suspecting (largely on the basis of the Epicurean analogy) that it was a critique of Volksreligion rather than a statement of “extreme atheism.”
28. The dating initially may be thought problematic. The publication of Callimachus’s Iambi is usually placed around 270 B.C.E. Th e last attested event in Diogenes’s biography of Theodorus is his retirement to Cyrene, “where he lived with Magas and continued to be held in high honor” (2.102). Magas conquered Cyrene for Ptolemy I soon after 301 but revolted against Alexandria after the latter’s death (probably between 279 and 275). If Theodorus really was to be found working just outside Alexandria at the time of the composition of the Iambi, he must have relocated from Cyrene once again—perhaps in the aftermath of worsening relations between the two states. (Note that Diogenes refers to Theodorus’s expulsion from Cyrene in his youth with the phrase “when he was banished from Cyrene for the first time” [2.103]; does this imply that there was a second banishment, in later life? Or is it looking forward to his subsequent banishment from Athens? Or does “for the first time” [to prōton] simply mean “originally,” marking the analepsis?) But all the details are so sketchy that hypotheses are fruitless.
29. Winston 1976; Romm 1992, 196–202.
30. The transmitted passage of Strabo reads, “το
31. Strab. 2.3.5 (T7a Winiarczyk); similarly Polyb. 34.5 (Strab. 2.4.2 = Euhemerus T5 Winiarczyk).
32. Romm 1992; Wiseman 1993, 131–32.
33. The analogies can be traced only in the original Greek: “χαλκεȋα μεγάλα” (Diod. Sic. 5.44.1–3 = T 38 Winiarczyk); “ἀναθήματα . . . χρυσȃ καὶ ἀργυρȃ πολλὰ καὶ μεγάλα” (Diod. Sic. 46.5 = T 37 Winiarczyk); “τὰ . . . θυρώματα το
34. “ε
35. Diod. Sic. 5.43.1 = T 38 Winiarczyk; Hom., Od. 7.115–16. Linguistic correspondences (Diodorus first, Homer second): “παντοίοις” ∼ “παντοȋαι”; “καρποφόροις”/“καρποφόρα” ∼ “ἀγλαόκαρποι”; “κυπαρíττων . . . ἀξαισίων τοȋς μεγέθεσι” / “στελέχη μεγάλα” ∼ “δένδρεα μακρά”; “θαυμαζόμενον” ∼ “θηεȋτο . . . `Οδυσσεύς.”
36. Diod. Sic. 5.43.2 = T 38 Winiarczyk, where a stream waters the plain (“εἰς πολλὰ μέρη το
37. Winiarczyk 2002, 93–96, discusses various sources for the temple/garden description without mentioning the Odyssey.
38. The phrasing is ambiguous as to whether the theoxeny has now ended: “‘have always in the past appeared <and still do>’, hence the present tense; see also 8.36. γε, however, raises the possibility that such divine appearances may have ended” (Garvie 1994, 205).
39. See Diod. Sic. 6.1.10 = T 61 Winiarczyk (“He went to Babylon and was entertained [epixenōthēnai] by Belos”); Diod. Sic. 6.1.10–11 = T 63 Winiarczyk for the war with Cilix.
40. Hom., Od. 5.36, 19.280, 23.339. “Honoring like a god” occurs relatively frequently in the Iliad: see, e.g., 9.155, with J. Griffin 1995, 93.
41. Kearns 1982; Louden 2011, 30–56 (reading the Odyssey against the Hebrew Bible).
42. See LSJ, s.v. “dios,” for its later, tragic meaning, “of Zeus.” Note too the adjective diogenēs, used in the Iliad particularly