EVANDER. In the Roman tradition, as given by Livy, i. 5-7, the story of the Arcadian Evander is connected with the arrival of Hercules in Italy and his recovery of the cattle of Geryon from the robber Cacus. Evander, having left the Arcadian town of Pallantium, becomes the eponymus, or name-giver, of the Palatine, one of the seven hills of Rome. This is only one of many Greek legends adopted by the Romans for the purpose of connecting Italian places with others of like-sounding names in Greece. The time when this story was embodied into Latin tradition cannot be precisely ascertained; but we may safely assign it to the period when Greek influence began to make itself widely felt in the Italian peninsula. The story is told with many variations, inconsistencies, and contradictions. According to Pausanias (viii. 43, 2), Evander was the son of Hermes and a daughter of the river Ladon; others spoke of him as a son of Echemus and Timandra. The motives which led him to leave Arcadia are also variously stated. The Latin writers made him a son of Mercury and the prophetess Carmenta, whose name belongs strictly to Italian mythology. So again, while one version of the story represents him as being hospitably welcomed in Italy, another speaks of him as gaining a footing in it by force, and after slaying Herilus, king of Praeneste. It would follow of necessity that the Italian legend would describe Evander as one who introduced Greek customs and rites into his new country, and would attribute to him such inventions as those which the Theban myth assigned to the Phoenician Cadmus. See Dion. Hal. i. 33; Cornewall Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, ch. viii. § 4.