Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​He also composed in prose On Sacrifices and On the Constitution of Crete, as well as an epic On Minos and Rhadamanthys in four thousand verses. He also founded the sanctuary of the Semnai (Venerable Goddesses) among the Athenians, as Lobon of Argos says in his On Poets. It is also said that he was the first to purify houses and fields and to found sanctuaries. But there are some who say that he did not fall asleep, but wandered abroad for a time, devoting himself to root-cutting. There is also an epistle of his extant, addressed to Solon the lawgiver, containing the constitution that Minos ordained for the Cretans. But Demetrius of Magnesia, in his On Poets and Authors of the Same Name, attempts to prove this epistle spurious on the grounds that it is modern and written not in the Cretan dialect, but in Attic, and modern Attic at that. However, I have also found another epistle, which runs as follows:

“Epimenides to Solon. Be of good cheer, my friend. For if Peisistratus had attacked the Athenians while they were still in the condition of day-laborers and not yet governed by good laws, he would have held power forever, having enslaved the citizens; but as it is, it is not cowardly men that he is reducing to bondage. Remembering Solon’s instruction, they suffer with a sense of shame and will not endure being under a tyranny. Even if Peisistratus himself should hold the city fast, I certainly do not expect that the sovereign power will pass to his children; for it is an intractable thing that men who have enjoyed freedom under the finest laws should be slaves. Do not wander about, but come to Crete to us; for here the monarch will not be formidable to you. But if his friends should encounter you anywhere on your wandering, I fear you might suffer some dreadful fate.”

​And this epistle runs thus. Demetrius says that some record that he received a kind of food from the Nymphs and kept it in an ox’s hoof; and partaking of it in small amounts, he was never evacuated by any excrement, nor was he ever seen eating. Timaeus also mentions him in his second book. And some say that the Cretans sacrifice to him as to a god; for they say that he was also most prophetic. At any rate, upon seeing Munichia among the Athenians, he declared that they did not know how many evils this place would cause them, since otherwise they would have demolished it even with their teeth; he said this so many years beforehand. It is also said that he was the first to call himself Aeacus, that he foretold to the Lacedaemonians their capture by the Arcadians, and that he pretended to have come back to life many times.

​Theopompus, in his Mirabilia, says that when he was constructing the sanctuary of the Nymphs, a voice broke forth from heaven: “Epimenides, not for the Nymphs, but for Zeus!” He also foretold to the Cretans the defeat of the Lacedaemonians by the Arcadians, as has been said before; and indeed they were captured near Orchomenus. And it is said that he aged in as many days as the years he had slept; for Theopompus says this as well. Myronianus, in his Parallels, says that the Cretans called him a Curete; and the Lacedaemonians preserve his body among themselves in accordance with a certain oracle, as Sosibius the Laconian says. There have also been two other men named Epimenides: the genealogist, and a third who wrote in the Doric dialect about Rhodes.