Chapter 10. EPIMENIDES (c. 600 B.C.)
[
109]
Epimenides, according to Theopompus and many
other writers, was the son of Phaestius; some, however, make him the son of Dosiadas, others of
Agesarchus. He was a native of Cnossos in Crete,
though from wearing his hair long he did not look
like a Cretan. One day he was sent into the country
by his father to look for a stray sheep, and at noon
he turned aside out of the way, and went to sleep
in a cave, where he slept for fifty-seven years. After
this he got up and went in search of the sheep, thinking he had been asleep only a short time. And when
he could not find it, he came to the farm, and found
everything changed and another owner in possession.
Then he went back to the town in utter perplexity;
and there, on entering his own house, he fell in with
people who wanted to know who he was. At length
he found his younger brother, now an old man, and
learnt the truth from him.
[
110]
So he became famous
throughout Greece, and was believed to be a special
favourite of heaven.
Hence, when the Athenians were attacked by
pestilence, and the Pythian priestess bade them
purify the city, they sent a ship commanded by
Nicias, son of Niceratus, to Crete to ask the help of
Epimenides. And he came in the 46th Olympiad,
1
purified their city, and stopped the pestilence in the
following way. He took sheep, some black and
others white, and brought them to the Areopagus;
and there he let them go whither they pleased,
instructing those who followed them to mark the
spot where each sheep lay down and offer a sacrifice
to the local divinity. And thus, it is said, the plague
was stayed. Hence even to this day altars may be
found in different parts of Attica with no name
inscribed upon them, which are memorials of this
atonement. According to some writers he declared
the plague to have been caused by the pollution
which Cylon brought on the city and showed them
how to remove it. In consequence two young men,
Cratinus and Ctesibius, were put to death and the
city was delivered from the scourge.
[
111]
The Athenians voted him a talent in money and
a ship to convey him back to Crete. The money he
declined, but he concluded a treaty of friendship
and alliance between Cnossos and Athens.
So he returned home and soon afterwards died.
According to Phlegon in his work
On Longevity he
lived
one hundred and fifty-seven years; according to the
Cretans two hundred and ninety-nine years. Xenophanes of Colophon gives his age as 154, according
to hearsay.
He wrote a poem
On the Birth of the Curetes and
Corybantes and a
Theogony,2 5000 lines in all; another
on the building of the Argo and Jason's voyage to
Colchis in 6500 lines.
[
112]
He also compiled prose works
On Sacrifices and the Cretan Constitution, also
On
Minos and Rhadamanthus, running to about 4000 lines.
At Athens again he founded the temple of the
Eumenides, as Lobon of Argos tells us in his work
On Poets. He is stated to have been the first who
purified houses and fields, and the first who founded
temples. Some are found to maintain that he did
not go to sleep but withdrew himself
3 for a while,
engaged in gathering simples.
There is extant a letter of his to Solon the lawgiver, containing a scheme of government which
Minos drew up for the Cretans. But Demetrius of
Magnesia, in his work on poets and writers of the
same name, endeavours to discredit the letter on the
ground that it is late and not written in the Cretan
dialect but in Attic, and New Attic too. However, I have found another letter by him which runs
as follows:
Epimenides to Solon
[
113]
"Courage, my friend. For if Pisistratus had attacked
the Athenians while they were still serfs and before
they had good laws, he would have secured power in
perpetuity by the enslavement of the citizens. But,
as it is, he is reducing to subjection men who are no
cowards, men who with pain and shame remember
Solon's warning and will never endure to be under a
tyrant. But even should Pisistratus himself hold
down the city, I do not expect that his power will
be continued to his children; for it is hard to contrive that men brought up as free men under the
best laws should be slaves. But, instead of going on
your travels, come quietly to Crete to me; for here
you will have no monarch to fear, whereas, if some
of his friends should fall in with you while you are
travelling about, I fear you may come to some harm.'
[
114]
This is the tenor of the letter. But Demetrius reports a story that he received from the Nymphs food
of a special sort and kept it in a cow's hoof; that he
took small doses of this food, which was entirely
absorbed into his system, and he was never seen to
eat. Timaeus mentions him in his second book.
Some writers say that the Cretans sacrifice to him
as a god; for they say that he had superhuman
foresight. For instance, when he saw Munichia, at
Athens, he said the Athenians did not know how
many evils that place would bring upon them; for,
if they did, they would destroy it even if they had
to do so with their teeth. And this he said so long
before the event. It is also stated that he was the
first to call himself Aeacus; that he foretold to the
Lacedaemonians their defeat by the Arcadians; and
that he claimed that his soul had passed through
many incarnations.
[
115]
Theopompus relates in his
Mirabilia that, as he
was building a temple to the Nymphs, a voice came
from heaven: "Epimenides, not a temple to the
Nymphs but to Zeus," and that he foretold to the
Cretans the defeat of the Lacedaemonians by the
Arcadians, as already stated; and in very truth they
were crushed at Orchomenus.
And he became old in as many days as he had
slept years; for this too is stated by Theopompus.
Myronianus in his
Parallels declares that the
Cretans
called him one of the Curetes. The Lacedaemonians
guard his body in their own keeping in obedience to
a certain oracle; this is stated by Sosibius the
Laconian.
There have been two other men named Epimenides,
namely, the genealogist and another who wrote in
Doric Greek about Rhodes.
