ABSTRACT
The clash of advocates of Indo-European Comparative Mythology with advocates of different versions of Euhemerism constitutes a comparatively little-known episode in the history of Victorian scholarship on myth, which, however, sheds light on the larger stakes involved in the study of mythology at the time. G.W. Cox tendentiously maintained, however, that ‘whatever may have been the sins of Euemeros against truth and honesty, his method aimed at the extraction of historical facts from the legends of his country by stripping them altogether of their supernatural character’. A particularly influential version of Euhemerism explained pagan deities and heroes as distorted reflections of figures from the Old Testament and thus provided a means of harmonizing the mythical traditions of polytheistic religions with the Bible. Blackie launched a vehement attack in particular against ‘Max Mueller and his English disciple, Cox’ for holding that there were ‘no human figures and historical characters in the whole gallery of heroes and demigods in the Greek mythology’.
