When William Cowper introduced these verses into The Task in 1785 the gigantic Handel Commemoration of the preceding year still rang fresh in the ears of thousands of Englishmen. In 1783 several musical amateurs had proposed to commemorate the centenary of Handel's birth and the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death by a series of stupendous Handel performances on a hitherto unprecedented scale, and the first great Handel Festival had accordingly taken place in Westminster Abbey in the late spring of 1784, warmly patronized by George III and the greater nobility, and enthusiastically attended by more than three thousand persons from every corner of the kingdom. A vocal and instrumental band of 525 performers, “inflamed and actuated by the Muse of Handel,” made this mammoth celebration “the most splendid tribute ever paid to posthumous fame,” and current periodicals exhausted every superlative in praising the grand occasion. The European Magazine reported that “the immense volume and torrent of sound, was almost too much for the head or the sense to bear — we were elevated into a species of delirium.” The performance was in “so superior, and so exalted a stile, that it must not be subjected to the rules of pettyfogging criticism,” since “so grand and beautiful a spectacle, with at the same time a feast so rich and perfect, has not been presented to the public eye within our memory.”

A hymn to the Creator ascribed to Plato deserves attention, even if both form and content show clearly that it is of much later date. Such a poem is preserved in the Anthologia Latina, where it is introduced as a translation from Greek made by “a certain Tiberianus.” This interesting document, in thirty-two verses, may be translated as follows:

“Almighty, borne by age-old heavens, amid Thy myriad virtues Thou art ever One, and no one can measure Thee with number or with time. Now (if by any name it is meet to invoke Thee) Thou shalt be invoked by the unknown name in which Thou, the Holy One, dost rejoice, whereat the mighty earth trembles, and the wandering stars stand in their swift course. Thou art One and likewise Many, Thou art First and Last, Thou art at once the Center and the Survivor of the universe. For Thou art without end, yet Thou bringest an end to the swift passage of time, and on high, from eternity, Thou dost behold harsh fate swept on with immutable whirl, Thou dost behold lives enclosed in time and again led back and returned to the upper spheres — so that the vitality, exhausted by births, which the universe has lost may return to it and may again circulate through the (celestial) bodies.”

Euhemerus is one of the most elusive and disconcerting writers in the Hellenistic period. He survives chiefly in the pages of Diodorus Siculus, who almost certainly had not taken the measure of his author. Our other chief source of information comes from the translation made by the poet Ennius, which in turn is known only through the works of later writers, who cited him for purposes of their own. Other authors have paid Euhemerus the compliment of imitating him, and something of their work has survived, also in fragments. Philo of Byblus wrote in the same spirit, and recent excavations at Ras Shamra have shown that his Phoenician History must be taken much more seriously than has been the fashion. Under these circumstances it may be worth while to re-examine the Euhemeristic tradition in an attempt to define its characteristics and its influence on the writing of history.