In Roman mythology, Evander [1] was a deific culture hero who brought the Greek pantheon, laws and alphabet to 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 hearers 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 raise an altar to this hero. The archaic altar was destroyed in the Great Fire of Rome, AD 64.

Evander was born to Mercury and Carmenta, and his wisdom was beyond that of all Arcadians. According to Virgil [2], previous to the Trojan War, he gathered a group of natives to a city he founded in Italy near the Tiber river, which he named Pallantium. Virgil states that he named the city in honor of his son, Pallas, although Pausanias says that Evander's birth city was Pallantium, thus he named the new city after the one in Arcadia.

Since he met Anchises before the Trojan War, Evander aids Aeneas[3] in his battle against the Rutuli under the autochthonous leader Turnus and plays a major role in Aeneid Book XII.

Evander was deified after his death and had an altar constructed in his name on the Aventine Hill.

Pallas apparently died childless, leaving the natives under Turnus to ravage his kingdom.


Notes

1. ^ A Greek spelling Euandros was affected by poets to emphasize the etymology of the name, "good man."
   
2. '^ Aeneid, viii
   
3. ^ They share descent through their common ancestor Atlas
   

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A son of Hermes by an Arcadian nymph, a daughter of Ladon, who is called Themis or Nicostrata, and in Roman traditions Carmenta or Tiburtis. (Pausanias viii. 43. § 2; Plnt. Quaest. Rom. 53; Dionys. A. R. i. 31; Serv. ad Aen. viii. 336.) Evander is also called a son of Echemus and Timandra. (Serv. ad Aen. viii. 130.) About sixty years previous to the Trojan war, Evander is said to have led a Pelasgian colony from Pallantium in Arcadia into Italy. The cause of this emigration was, according to Dionysius, a civil feud among the people, in which the party of Evander was defeated, and therefore left their country of their own accord. Servius, on the other hand, relates that Evander had killed his father at the instigation of his mother, and that he was obliged to quit Arcadia on that account. (Serv. ad Aen. viii. 51; comp. Ov. Fast. i. 480.) He landed in Italy on the banks of the Tiber, at the foot of the Palatine Hill, and was hospitably received by king Turnus. According to Servius (ad Aen. viii. 562), however, Evander took possession of the country by force of arms, and slew Herilus, king of Praeneste, who had attempted to expel him. He built a town Pallantium, which was subsequently incorporated with Rome, and from which the names of Palatium and Palatinus were believed to have arisen. (Varro, de Ling. Lat. v. 53.) Evander is said to have taught his neighbours milder laws and the arts of peace and social life, and especially the art of writing, with which he himself had been made acquainted by Heracles (Plut. Quaest. Rom. 56), and music; he also introduced among them the worship of the Lycaean Pan, of Demeter, Poseidon, Heracles, and Nice. (Liv. i. 5; Dionys. i. 31, &c.; Ov. Fast. i. 471, v. 91; Pausanias l. c.) Virgil (Aen. viii. 51) represents Evander as still alive at the time when Aeneias arrived in Italy, and as forming an alliance with him against the Latins. (Comp. Serv. ad Aen. viii. 157.) Evander had a son Pallas, and two daughters, Rome and Dyna. (Virg. Aen. viii. 574; Serv. ad Aen. i. 277; Dionys. i. 32.) He was worshipped at Pallantium in Arcadia, as a hero, and that town was subsequently honoured by the emperor Antoninus with several privileges. Evander's statue at Pallantium stood by the side of that of his son Pallas. At Rome he had an altar at the foot of the Aventine. (Paus. viii. 44. § 5; Dionys. l. c.)

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A son of the Lycian king Sarpedon, who took part in the Trojan war. (Diod.v.79.)

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a son of Priam. (Apollod. iii. 12. § 5; Dict. Cret. iii. 14.)