The life of ancient Greek sage, philosopher and prophet Epimenides of Crete balances between history and myth, however his philosophy and some of his life’s works were real.
Real enough to have the biographer of philosophers Diogenes Laertius include him as one of the greatest sages of Greece.
Epimenides was born in the 7th or 6th century BCE in Knossos, Crete, according to Diogenes Laertius. Plutarch and Strabo, however, cite Phaistos as his birthplace.
According to the traditional myth, when he was young his father sent him to look for a lost sheep in the fields. Epimenides couldn’t find the sheep and got confused and tired. He went into a cave to look and he fell asleep. He slept for 57 years, hence the proverbial phrase “Epimenides’ Sleep.” Pausanias says that sleep left him “in the fortieth year.”
When he woke up, he started looking for the sheep again, believing that he had slept a little. He couldn’t find it and so he headed for his field, where he found everything different and a foreign owner. He headed to the city to seek answers and found his brother, now an old man, who revealed the astounding truth to him.
When the Greeks learned this story they considered him a favorite of the gods because they believed that during his long sleep he met with the gods, the goddess of truth, Aletheia and the goddess of justice, Themis, among them. It was also said that Pythagoras descended with Epimenides to the same cave, the Idaean Cave, to be initiated.
Epimenides’ name is mentioned along with the ancient Greek sages Orpheus, Pythagoras and Empedocles and indicates a possessor of mystical and superhuman knowledge.
Because he came out of the cave as young as he had been 57 years earlier, the news spread fast and far, and his name became known in all of Greece. So the life of the ancient Greek sage Epimenides became a legend very early on.
It is not possible to separate the historical from the mythological element today. In Epimenides’ time, myths and legends were more important than facts because they were more fascinating and the latter could not be confirmed. Among the roles attributed to him were priest and soothsayer, miracle worker and poet, physician and politician, and friend of Apollo and the Muses.
Even in his outward appearance (as described by Diogenes Laertius’ in “Lives of the Philosophers”) was exceptional. He was said to resemble a Kouros of archaic art (with surprisingly long hair), while his admirers called him Curetis. They said, moreover, that his mother was the nymph Balte, a variant of the Cretan Artemis. People saw Epimenides as a living legend, an ageless wise man.
According to Aristotle in the “Athenian Republic,” when the Alcmaeonidae were tried and exiled from Athens and Cylon took over the city, causing the Cylonian Agos (Cylonian curse), the Athenians called on the wise man Epimenides the Cretan for help.
Another version of the call to the ancient Greek sage was to save Athens from the plague imposed by the gods, as a result of the hubris of the followers of Megacles of the Acmaeonidae family. They had killed Cylon’s followers when they sought asylum at the altar of goddess Athena on the Acropolis. It was then that the Athenians sought out Epimenides for assistance.
Some have asserted that the sage stopped the plague by offering sacrifices to the local divinities, but others say that he put the blame on Cylon for his attempted tyranny.
The ancient Greek sage took sheep, some black and others white, and brought them to the Areopagus, a rocky outcrop near the Acropolis where the Athenian prominent council traditionally met; and there he let them go wherever they pleased, instructing those who followed them to mark the spot where each sheep lay down and offer a sacrifice to the local divinity on the spot. And thus, it is said, the plague was stayed.
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.
The grateful Athenians voted him a large amount of money, but he declined it while concluding a treaty of friendship and alliance between Knossos and Athens, which shows he also was a plenipotentiary. Epimenides only asked for a “branch of the sacred olive-tree of Athena, with which he returned home,” Plutarch wrote.
There is a theogony called “Oracles” that was written by the ancient Greek sage Epimenides. It is an epic poem about the origin of the gods and the universe. The Neoplatonist Damascius states that, according to Epimenides’ “Oracles,” the first principles of the universe were air and night, from which Tartarus was born and from Tartarus two Titans were born.
From the union of these Titans an egg was born, the cosmogenic egg, known from ancient cosmogonies of the ancient Indians and the Orphics. From this egg the entire race of gods was born. It was a theogony different from Hesiod’s reflecting local Cretan characteristics.
An excerpt from the Epimenides Theogony reads: “Neither is there a navel of the earth nor of the sea, and if there is one, it is known only to the gods and not to men.” (A hint at Delphi, which was considered the navel of the earth).
Another historical work entitled “Cretika” is also attributed to Epimenides. It is a collection of myths about the transformations of mythological heroes into stars that are related to the Cretan Zeus and the Curetes, as well as to Ida.
Legend says that Epimenides lived 157 years, 57 of which he spent asleep in the cave. According to Cretan tradition, he lived 299 years. Xenophanes writes that he lived 154 years.
Epimenides owed his longevity to the secrets of the herbs of the Cretan land which he ate with the result that he did not feel hunger. Diogenes Laertius adds that no one ever saw Epimenides eat. Aristotle mentions that Epimenides was a seer of the past, not of the future even though his theogony is entitled “Oracles.”
