Identifying the Jewish Eupolemoi: an onomastic approach

The Jewish ambassador Eupolemos, who was sent on an embassy to the Romans by Judas Maccabee, is generally thought to be identical to his namesake, the Jewish historian mentioned by Clemens of Alexandria and Eusebios. This is due to the apparent rarity of his name, Eupolemos, among Jews. The present article undertakes an onomastic investigation into the name Eupolemos among the Jews in antiquity in order to discover whether an identification of the two namesakes is plausible. By providing a geographical, chronological and onomastic investigation, the author argues that it is in fact very likely that Eupolemos the ambassador and Eupolemos the historian were one and the same person.