In Roman mythology, Evander (from Greek Εὔανδρος Euandros, "good man" or "strong man") or Euander was a deific culture hero from Arcadia, Greece, who brought the Greek pantheon, laws and alphabet to Italy, where he founded the city of Pallantium on the future site of Rome, sixty years before the Trojan War. He instituted the Lupercalia.
The oldest tradition of its founding ascribes to Evander the erection of the Great Altar of Hercules in the For...
more
In Roman mythology, Evander (from Greek Εὔανδρος Euandros, "good man" or "strong man") or Euander was a deific culture hero from Arcadia, Greece, who brought the Greek pantheon, laws and alphabet to Italy, where he founded the city of Pallantium on the future site of Rome, sixty years before the Trojan War. He instituted the Lupercalia.
The oldest tradition of its founding ascribes to Evander the erection of the Great Altar of Hercules in the Forum Boarium. In Virgil's Aeneid, VIII, where Aeneas and his crew first come upon them, Evander and his people are engaged in venerating Hercules for having dispatched the giant Cacus. Virgil's listeners recognized the very same Great Altar of Hercules in the Forum Boarium of their own day, one detail among the passages that Virgil has saturated with references linking a heroic past with the Age of Augustus. As Virgil's backstory goes, Hercules had been returning from Gades with Geryon's cattle when Evander entertained him and was the first to...
less
