. The contents were satirical, the satire being
directed against the contemporary philosophers and their doctrines, and
against the popular notions of the gods. Menippus availed himself partly
of the old criticism of mythology and partly of the philosophical attacks
on the popular conception of the gods. The only novelty was the facetious
form in which he concealed the sting of serious criticism. It is
impossible to decide whether he positively denied the existence of the
gods, but his satire on the popular notions and its success among his
contemporaries at least testifies to the weakening of the popular faith
among the educated classes. In Hellas itself he seems to have gone out of
fashion very early; but the Romans took him up again; Varro and Seneca
imitated him, and Lucian made his name famous again in the Greek world in
the second century after Christ. It is chiefly due to Lucian that we can
form an idea of Menippus's literary work, hence we shall return to Cynic
satire in our chapter on the age of the Roman Empire.

During our survey of Greek philosophical thought in the Hellenistic period
we have only met with a few cases of atheism in the strict sense, and they
all occur about and immediately after 300, though there does not seem to
be any internal connexion between them. About the same time there appeared
a writer, outside the circle of philosophers, who is regularly listed
among the _atheoi_, and who has given a name to a peculiar theory about
the origin of the idea of the gods, namely, Euhemerus. He is said to have
travelled extensively in the service of King Cassander of Macedonia. At
any rate he published his theological views in the shape of a book of
travel which was, however, wholly fiction. He relates how he came to an
island, Panchaia, in the Indian Ocean, and in a temple there found a
lengthy inscription in which Uranos, Kronos, Zeus and other gods recorded
their exploits. The substance of the tale was that these gods had once
been men, great kings and rulers, who had bestowed on their peoples all
sorts of improvements in civilisation and had thus got themselves
worshipped as gods. It appears from the accounts that Euhemerus supposed
the heavenly bodies to be real and eternal gods--he thought that Uranos had
first taught men to worship them; further, as his theory is generally
understood, it must be assumed that in his opinion the other gods had
ceased to exist as such after their death. This accords w