Evander of Pallantium

In ancient tradition Evander is an Arcadian leader who left Pallantium in Arcadia and founded a new Pallantium on the site of Rome's Palatine Hill roughly sixty years before the Trojan War. Accounts vary: some authors present him as son of Hermes and an Arcadian nymph (named Themis by Dionysius, called Carmenta in Roman usage), others record versions in which he was exiled for offending the gods, driven out by civil unrest, or banished for familial murder. He is represented as the transmitter of Greek cultural elements—laws, pantheon, and alphabet—to his Italian followers and as a founder whose acts explain Roman place-names and cults.

Sources give no sustained physical description. In Virgil's narrative Evander appears as an aged Arcadian king encountered by Aeneas; beyond this literary portrayal the provided materials supply no consistent details of height, dress, or distinguishing marks and emphasize his role and age rather than detailed corporeal features.

Evander's principal functions in the sources are cultural and civilizing: he is credited with teaching law, social life, music, and transmitting the Greek pantheon and the alphabet to the people of Pallantium and neighboring communities. Tradition also attributes foundation and martial deeds to him in differing accounts: he is said in some chronicles to have taken possession of parts of Italy by force (including traditions that he killed local kings such as Herilus of Praeneste) and in poetic legend to have bested local opponents (older traditions attribute feats such as killing the three-souled Erulus). Religiously, he is credited with instituting the Lupercalia and with the earliest traditions that associate him with erecting an altar to Hercules (the oldest accounts link this foundation to the site later visible as the Forum Boarium). After death he was said to have been deified and to have had an altar on the Aventine Hill in Rome.