Evander and Cacus

Summary

Evander is a man of Arcadia in Greece who was exiled and came to Italy sixty years before the Trojan War, settling on the Palatine hill where Rome would stand. Cacus is a half-human monster who lived in a cave on the Aventine, killed by Hercules when he stole his cattle. Evander's mother is the prophetess Carmenta, and Dionysius makes his father Hermes. He left his homeland after a feud in which his party was beaten, and his mother told him: do not weep, this is no punishment for a crime, and every land is a homeland to the brave. When his ship entered the Tiber, Carmenta saw the bank, hailed it, and foretold that these hills would rule the earth. Faunus, king of the land, received them and gave them as much land as they wished, and they built a village they named Pallanteum after their city in Arcadia, from which the Palatine took its name.

Then Hercules came, driving the cattle of Geryon that he had taken from the island of Erythia in the far west. He swam the Tiber with the herd, found green pasture, rested the cattle and slept, heavy with food and wine. On the Aventine there was a deep cave the sun never entered, the home of Cacus, son of Vulcan, who breathed out black fire; the ground before his cave was always warm with fresh blood, and men's heads hung nailed to its door. The cattle took his fancy, and he took four bulls and four heifers, dragging them by their tails into his cave so that their hoofprints pointed outwards and no one following the tracks would find them. As Hercules was leaving, the herd lowed, and one heifer shut in the cave lowed back. Hercules, furious, took his club and climbed the hill; Cacus saw him and for the first time was afraid; he fled to his cave as if fear had given his feet wings, broke the chains and let fall across the door a rock his father had hung there. Hercules went round the hill three times looking for a way in, then heaved at the crag standing over the cave until he tore it from its roots and threw it towards the river, and the cave lay open as if the earth had split to show the underworld. Hercules shot at him with arrows and stones; Cacus belched thick smoke that filled the cave with darkness; Hercules leapt into the smoke and fire, seized him and squeezed until his eyes started and his throat was dry of blood, then brought out the cattle and dragged the corpse out by its feet.

Evander ruled that district by his standing rather than by power, revered for bringing the wonder of letters to people who knew no arts, and still more because they held his mother Carmenta to be a goddess who foretold the future. When the herdsmen crowded round the stranger accusing him of murder, Evander asked his name, father and country, and on learning them said: hail, Hercules, son of Jupiter; my mother told me you would be added to the gods, and that an altar would be dedicated to you here which the greatest nation on earth would call the Greatest Altar and serve by your rite. Hercules accepted the omen and built the altar, the first victim was sacrificed to him, and two local families, the Potitii and the Pinarii, took charge of its service.

The idea the story turns on is that Rome before Rome was a village of strangers: a Greek exile who carries writing, a mother who prophesies, a passing hero driving cattle from the end of the earth, and a thief who lives in a cave and turns the tracks round. The thief reverses the road to hide the cattle, the cattle themselves give him away by lowing, and the hero opens the cave to the light. What remains of the story is an altar in the cattle market, two families who serve it, and a feast at which Hercules is remembered every year.

We read both names in the Arabic tongue on a reading proposed on the method, since the project's essays do not read them. Εὔανδρος, Euandros, is a Greek compound meaning "good man": εὐ, well, ἀνήρ, man, and the nominative ending -ος. The δ of ἀνδρ- is a sound that grew between n and r, for Homer has ἀνέρα without it, so the word leaves a vowel onset, n and r, the letters of anāra: anāra is to light a thing up, and the Muḥkam gives anartu al-thawb wa-hanartuhu, I gave the cloth its ʿalam, a border-line by which it is known, and nīr al-ṭarīq, the part of a road that shows clearly. Evander in Livy's story is the man who brought people the wonder of writing, marks that make speech plain. Cacus, Cācus, without -us leaves Cāc-, with a long ā after the first c, which we read as kaʿkaʿa: Ibn al-Athīr gives takaʿkaʿa, he held back and went backwards. The ʿ is lost in Latin or becomes a vowel, so the ā grew long where the first ʿ fell. In the story Cacus drives the cattle backwards, then flees in fear into his cave and blocks its door.

Linguistic Root

Beekes gives εὐ, "well, good", from Indo-European *h₁su- or *uesu-, whose s was lost in Greek so that no consonant of it remains, and ἀνήρ, "man", from *h₂ner-; Homer's old accusative ἀνέρα has no δ, so the δ of ἀνδρός grew between n and r. The reading therefore covers the second part only, and its original letters are the laryngeal Beekes sets at its start, then n, then r. Arabic has anāra and hanara in the same sense according to al-Jawharī and al-Liḥyānī, so hamza and h alternate at the start of the word as the laryngeal and the vowel alternate at the start of ἀνήρ. Ibn Sīdah gives nīr al-thawb, the ʿalam or border of a cloth, nirtu al-thawb wa-anartuhu, I gave the cloth a border, and nīr al-ṭarīq, the part of a road that shows clearly; Lane gives anāra, it gave light, and anārahu, he made it plain and evident. What joins these senses is the mark that makes a thing plain and visible, and it meets what Livy says of Evander, a man revered by people who knew no arts because he brought them writing, and what Hyginus says, that his mother Carmenta turned the Greek letters into Latin. The limit of the reading is that ἀνήρ means "man" in Greek, not "light", and the Arabic sense here is chosen through the story. The Cassandra page reads -ανδρ- as nadhīr, the warner, which takes the δ as a root letter; as Beekes shows, the δ is not part of the root.

Lewis and Short write Cācus with a long ā and give the Greek as Κᾶκος, while Greek κακός, "bad", has a short a, so it can be the name only by changing the vowel. The dictionary lists another Latin word, căcus, "servant", with a short a, and suggests it may come from κακός. The Arabic reading takes the long ā as evidence: kaʿkaʿa has two ʿ, and in the method's Latin table ʿ drops or becomes a vowel, so the first dropped and lengthened the vowel before it, and the second dropped before the ending -us. Ibn al-Athīr gives takaʿkaʿta, you held back and went backwards; Salmone gives kaʿkaʿa, withheld, frightened away, and kuʿkuʿ, timid. In the Aeneid Cacus drags the cattle by their tails "with the signs of the road reversed", then "we saw him afraid for the first time", and he flees to his cave and blocks it with the rock: he goes backwards and holds back.

Key Mythic Narratives

Dionysius's version

Dionysius makes Cacus a local robber, not a monster. He found the cattle unguarded while Hercules slept and hid some of them in his cave, dragging each in backwards by the tail. When Hercules came, he denied having seen them, refused to let him search the cave and called on his neighbours, complaining of the stranger's violence. Hercules drove the rest of the herd to the cave door; the penned cattle smelled their companions and lowed; Hercules killed him with his club and brought the cave down on him, then purified himself in the river and set up an altar to Jupiter the Discoverer near the Porta Trigemina in thanks for finding his cattle.

Ovid's version

In Ovid only two bulls are stolen, and Hercules is a guest in Evander's house. When the stolen beasts low, Hercules says: I accept the call. Cacus blocks the door with a rock that ten yoke of oxen could scarcely stir, and Hercules shoves it aside with the shoulders that once held up the sky. Cacus fights with rocks and logs, then falls back on his father's trick and breathes flames until you would think Typhoeus was blowing; Hercules brings his club down on his face three and four times, and he falls vomiting smoke and blood. Hercules sacrifices a bull to Jupiter, invites Evander and the herdsmen, and sets up for himself the Greatest Altar where a part of the city takes its name from an ox.

Evander and Aeneas

Virgil has Evander tell the story of Cacus when he receives Aeneas while sacrificing to Hercules on his feast day, then walk him over the Palatine, tell him how Saturn came to this land fleeing Jupiter, and show him Carmenta's altar and gate, the sanctuary Romulus would later open, and the Lupercal cave under the rock. Carmenta foretold the death of her grandson Pallas, Evander's son, in the Trojans' war.

Evander and the Lupercalia

Livy says it was Evander who set up on the Palatine the festival of the Lupercalia, brought from Arcadia, in which young men run naked in honour of Lycaean Pan, whom the Romans called Inuus.

Symbolic Reading

The Roman Semitic essay makes Hercules a face of the Tyrian Melqart, and says the Romans knew him in the west as "Hercules of Gades". The story of Cacus agrees: the cattle Hercules drives to Rome came from Erythia, an island Apollodorus says "is now called Gadira", the site of Melqart's most famous temple in the west. So the road that passes Rome in the story is the sea-trade road from Tyre to Cádiz, and the Greatest Altar stands in the cattle market on the Tiber, where river and road meet.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In the Homeric Hymn to Hermes the infant Hermes steals fifty cows from the herd of his brother Apollo and drives them backwards so that their hoofprints are reversed, then shuts them in a high-roofed byre. Cacus's trick is Hermes's trick, and Evander, who tells the story of Cacus, is the son of Hermes in Dionysius. The difference is that Hermes's theft ends in a settlement between brothers in which Apollo takes the lyre, and Cacus's ends in his death. Both belong with the trickster who turns the tracks round.

In Ṛgveda 10.108 Saramā, the messenger of Indra, goes to the Paṇis, who have hidden the cattle in a treasure-chamber "paved with rock"; they ask her who will set the cattle free without a battle, and she answers: be gone, and let the lowing cattle come forth as holy Law commands. The cattle shut in the rock, the lowing with which they come out and the hero's messenger who demands them come together in Indra's story and in the story of Cacus.

The story begins with Heracles himself in his tenth labour: he takes the cattle of three-bodied Geryon from Erythia, kills his dog and herdsman, and drives them across Italy, which Apollodorus says was named after a bull that broke away from him, because the Tyrrhenians called the bull italus.