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EPIMENIDES

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Originally appearing in Volume V09, Page 694 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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EPIMENIDES , poet and See also:

prophet of See also:Crete, lived in the 6th See also:century B.C. Many fabulous stories are told of him, and even his existence is doubted. While tending his See also:father's See also:sheep, he is said to have fallen into a deep See also:sleep in the Dictaean See also:cave near See also:Cnossus where he lived, from which he did not awake for fifty-seven years (See also:Diogenes Laertius i. 109-115). When the Athenians were visited by a pestilence in consequence of the See also:murder of Cylon, he was invited by See also:Solon (596) to purify the See also:city. The only See also:reward he would accept was a See also:branch of the sacred See also:olive, and a promise of perpetual friendship between See also:Athens and Cnossus (See also:Plutarch, Solon, 12; See also:Aristotle, See also:Ath. Pol. 1). He died in Crete at an advanced See also:age; according to his See also:country-men, who afterwards honoured him as a See also:god, he lived nearly three See also:hundred years. According to another See also:story, he was taken prisoner in a See also:war between the Spartans and Cnossians, and put to See also:death by his captors, because he refused to prophesy favourably for them. A collection of oracles, a theogony, an epic poem on the Argonautic expedition, See also:prose See also:works on purifications and sacrifices, and a See also:cosmogony, were attributed to him. Epimenides must be reckoned with See also:Melampus and See also:Onomacritus as one of the founders of Orphism.

He is supposed to be the Cretan prophet alluded to in the See also:

epistle to See also:Titus (i. 12). See C. Schultess, De Epimenide Cretensi (1877); O. See also:Kern, De Orphei, Epimenidis . . . Theogoniis (1888) ; G. Barone di Vincenzo, E. di Creta e le Credenze religiose de'suoi Tempi (188o) ; H. Demoulin, Epimenide de Crete . (19o1); H. Diets, See also:Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (1903); O. Kern in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopddie.

End of Article: EPIMENIDES

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EPINAOS (Gr. Eri, after, and vans, a temple)

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