Epimenides

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Epimenides (Greek: Έπιμενίδης) the Ph�stian from Crete (some put him from Knossos) was a semi-mythical 6th century BC Dorian Greek seer and philosopher-poet, who is said to have fallen asleep for fifty-seven years in a Cretan cave sacred to Zeus, after which he reportedly awoke with the gift of prophecy. He was a prophet of Apollo and was counted as the seventh sage in the list of Seven Sages of Greece (by those who will not admit Periander into the number). Plato called him "a divinely inspired man". ⁶

Plutarch said of him that he was favored by the heavens and possessed an extensive command of things supernatural and the ritual parts of religion. The men of his age called him a new Curies and a son of a nymph named Balte. Furthermore, he had a substantial knowledge of medicine and natural history that appeared super-human. Stories abound about his mystical abilities such as his ability of projection; sending his soul out of his body and being able to recall it at pleasure and the power of prophecy. It was said that he held communications with the gods.

In the most profound event of his life, Epimenides occassioned the purification of Athens after the pollution brought by the Alcmeonidae. As the gods of Athens were ineffectual in delivering them of the plague, the Pythian oracle at Delphi indicated that there was a god that remained unappeased. It told them to send for Epimenides out of Crete. Purification rites of the time were not only intended to appease the heavenly beings but also allay feuds and party faction (stasis (Ancient Greek)) among the people. In the this particular rite, Epimenides released hungry black and white sheep early in the morning. Instructing men to follow them, they were to notice where the sheep stopped and layed down. There the Athenians, building altars in each spot the sheep laid down, sacrificed them in the belief that any god concerned in the matter of the plague was given an opportunity to reveal his willingness to help by causing sheep that pleased him to lie down to rest as a sign that he would accept those sheep if they were offered in a sacrifice. The design of divine favor would be demonstrated by these hungry sheep lying down which when hungry would keep them moving and eating. Upon the completion of this rite, the plague was lifted. Diogenes Laertius states that these "altars may be found in different parts of Attica with no name inscribed upon them, which are memorials of this atonement". Furthermore, Pausanias in his "Description of Greece" (vol 1, 1:4) and Philostratus in his "Appolonius of Tyana" refer to "altars to an unknown god" implying that an inscription to that effect was engraved upon them. ⁵

The seer's expertise in sacrifices lead to the reform of funeral practices. These were of great help to Solon in his reform of the Athenian state. He moderated their extreme behaviors and tried to "make the people more submissive to righteousness and more inclined to harmony". His partnership with Solon and his religious reforms were "of little doubt political", and that Solon's attempt to implement a mixed government in Athens "would hardly have been accepted had it not been recommended and sanctioned by some person who, like Epimenides, claimed from men little less than the veneration due to a superior being." ² Diogenes Laertius preserves a number of spurious letters between Epimenides and Solon in his Lives of the Philosophers. Epimenides was also said to have prophesied at Sparta on military matters and showed the famous philosopher, Pythagoras around Crete including the Cave of Ida. ⁷

Pausanias reports that when Epimenides died, his skin was found to be covered with tattooed writing. This was considered odd, because the Greeks reserved tatooing for slaves. Some modern scholars have seen this as evidence that Epimenides was heir to the shamanic religions of Central Asia, because tattooing is often associated with shamanic initiation. The skin of Epimenides was preserved at the courts of the ephores in Sparta, conceivably as a good-luck charm.

Several prose and poetic works, now lost, were attributed to Epimenides by the Suda, including a theogony, oracles, a work on the laws of Crete, and a treatise on Minos and Rhadymanthus.

His life's works

Epimenides' poem Cretica is quoted twice in the New Testament. In the poem, Minos addresses Zeus thus:

They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one?

The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!

But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest forever,

For in thee we live and move and have our being.

The "lie" of the Cretans is that Zeus was mortal; Epimenides considered Zeus immortal. The second line is quoted, with a veiled attribution ("a prophet of their own"), in the Epistle to Titus, chapter 1, verse 12, to warn Titus about the Cretans. "Cretans, always liars", with the same theological intent as Epimenides, also appears in the Hymn to Zeus of Callimachus. The fourth line is quoted without attribution in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 17, verse 28.

The "prophet" in Titus 1:12 is identified by St. Clement of Alexandria as Epimenides. ¹ In this passage, Clement mentions that "some say" Epimenides should be counted among the seven wisest philosophers.

Plutarch records a pithy statement of his when looking up at the Munychia:

"How blind is man in future things! for did the Athenians foresee what mischief this would do to their city, they would eat it with their own teeth".

His meaning is that the ports of Munychia with its concomitmant of commerce and foreign influence would not only bring degeneration of the Athenian aristocratic Greek culture (please see banausos), but probably could be said to point to the future pain and suffering of the Athenian people brought on by the Peloponnesian War. (Their commerce and democracy fueled their desire for imperialism thus causing this most tragic war.)

It is not clear when Epimenides became associated with the Epimenides paradox, a variation of the liar paradox. Epimenides himself does not appear to have intended any irony or paradox in his statement, "Cretans, always liars", nor did Callimachus, nor the author of Titus, nor Clement. In the Middle Ages, many forms of the liar paradox were studied under the heading of insolubilia, but these were not associated with Epimenides. The earliest unmistakable reference to the Epimenides paradox as it is known today is an article by Bertrand Russell on the theory of types dating to 1908.

Miscellania

St. Luke may be refering to one of Epimenides' altars when he records St. Paul's reference in the Book of Acts 17:28 to an altar addressed "To the Unknown God" as of a way of pointing out an association between the god of Christianity and that 'unknown god'. ⁵
Goethe wrote a poem inspired by Epimendes fifty year sleep. Goethe used the subject for a drama entitled Das Epimenides Erwachen, "in which he symbolises his own aloofness from the great cause of the Fatherland, the result of want of faith in the miraculous power that resides in an enthusiastic outbreak of patriotic feeling." ³
Thomas Carlyle titled one of his chapters in his classic The French Revolution, the 'Epimendes'.

"All grows, and seeks and endures its destinies: consider likewise how much grows, as the trees do, whether we think of it or not. So that when your Epimenides, your somnolent Peter Klaus, since named Rip van Winkle, awakens again, he finds it a changed world. In that seven-years' sleep of his, so much has changed! All that is without us will change while we think not of it; much even that is within us. The truth that was yesterday a restless Problem, has to-day grown a Belief burning to be uttered: on the morrow, contradiction has exasperated it into mad Fanaticism; obstruction has dulled it into sick Inertness; it is sinking towards silence, of satisfaction or of resignation. To-day is not Yesterday, for man or for thing. Yesterday there was the oath of Love; today has come the curse of Hate. Not willingly: ah, no; but it could not help coming. The golden radiance of youth, would it willingly have tarnished itself into the dimness of old age?--Fearful: how we stand enveloped, deep-sunk, in that Mystery of Time; and are Sons of Time; fashioned and woven out of Time; and on us, and on all that we have, or see, or do, is written: Rest not, Continue not, Forward to thy doom!" ⁴

A chapter of the PanCretan Association in San Francisco is named after Epimenides.
A butterfly found in Eastern Russia, Eastern China, Korea and Japan is named 'Kirinia epimenides'.

References

Miscellanies, St. Clement of Alexandria, chapter 14
1. St. Jerome also mentions that St. Paul quoted Epimenides.
See entry "Epimenides", Harper's Dictionary
Nuttall Encyclop�dia of General Knowledge, edited by Reverend James Wood, 1907.
The French Revolution, Thomas Carlyle, Volume II, Book 2.3, chap 2.3.1.
Noah and a Christian application
1. Evidences of universal truth
Laws 1.642 D, E.
Diogenes Laertius, VIII. 2-3.

Bibliography

Val. Max. viii.13.
The Lives and Opinions Of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius, trans. by C. D. Younge, "Life of Epimenides".
Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Plutarch, "Life of Solon", trans. by John Dryden, rev. by Arthur Hugh Clough, The Modern Library, NY.
monograph De Epimenide Crete, Schultess, Vienna, 1877.
Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities, ed. by Harry Thurston Peck, Cooper Square Publishers, NY, 1st publ.1896, republ. 1962.