Art. 7.-A CRETAN PROPHET.

1. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Edited by H. Diels. Vol. II, pp. 185-194. Berlin: Weidmann, 1912.

2. The Commentaries of Isho'dad of Merv, Bishop of Hadatha. Edited and translated by Margaret D. Gibson, with an introduction by J. Rendel Harris. Vol. iv (Acts of the Apostles), 1913: vol. v, Part ii (The Epistles of Paul the Apostle), 1916. Cambr. Univ. Press.

3. Article on Epimenides. By Otto Kern. Pauly-Wissowa's Real-Encyclopädie.

4. Articles by J. Rendel Harris, in the Expositor, 1906, p. 305, 1907, p. 332, 1912, p. 348, 1915, p. 29; T. Nicklin, in the Classical Review, March 1916, p. 33; H. J. Lawlor, in the Irish Church Quarterly, July 1916, pp. 180-193; and Hugo Gressmann, in the Philologische Wochenschrift, July 1913, p. 935.

WHEN a great Cretan is reviving national cohesion and definiteness of aim, as well as patriotism and honesty, in the Hellenic nation, the memory recurs of a Cretan in ancient history, who played his part in remodelling Athenian life and policy. Crete has always offered a refuge for fragments of races, and has thus been a microcosm of the Eastern Mediterranean world from the time of Homer onwards; and it is in accordance with past history that the great Cretan of our day should bear the name of the Venetian,' and embody that mixture of races which has made Crete important in spite of its remoteness from Greece and its comparatively small size and unproductiveness. The old Venetian settlers, mainly aristocratic adventurers of enterprising character, have made an indelible impression on mediæval and modern Crete; but this page of history has never been written.

It was because Crete contained such a mixed population that it was important in the development of Hellenism and Hellenic unity of feeling as distinguished from the Greek or Græco-Asiatic type of civilisation out of which it grew. That fine product which we call Hellenism, with its freedom of view in politics and society, its delicate perception of symmetry in art and literature, its bold confidence in the individual man as

the governor of his own life, was evolved amid the strife of nations in the Levant and the Egean from the amalgamation of many diverse tribes. Hellenism was a product so many-sided that it could not arise amid a homogeneous race; so delicate that the proper balance of the various racial characteristics which produced it could not last very long; so important in the development of modern society that it cannot lose its value for us; so unique in type that it can never cease to interest educated men.

The enigmatic figure of the Cretan prophet, poet and religious lawgiver, Epimenides, is eminent in Athenian historical tradition in the sixth century B.C. He stands on the step from the old religion (let us call it GræcoAnatolian) to the new Olympian religion of Hellenism, fully conscious of the character, and sympathetic with the ideals, of both. He was a vigorous personality, sound in body and mind, who lived a long life through a period of rapid development, and appreciated the great changes that occurred around him. It is a poor and niggardly criticism which denies his historical character, because he altered with his times instead of standing selfconsistent and unmoved amid a changing world. Epimenides lived amid the rapid development of Hellenism in the sixth century B.C., growing with the time and helping to guide the progress of history; and German critics cannot see the process.

In a superficial view Epimenides does not inspire confidence. The few scraps preserved from his works do not correspond to his reputation, or afford sufficient ground for the eminence ascribed to him in tradition; but they have never been reasonably interpreted according to the nature of early thought. Epimenides is encrusted with legend (e.g. he slept for 57 years in a cave), and he became a centre round which gathered much folklore. The same thing happens in all periods to certain outstanding figures, not merely in the remote dawn of history, but even at the present day. There have always been figures in Oxford university life who become encrusted with stories, some of which isolate and exaggerate one feature in a complex personality, while others show the man in an unreal character as the undergraduate conceives him. The Jowett who was

created by several generations of undergraduates is an example of the former kind of travesty; the latter kind is more complex. Yet there must be some reason for these mythical or semi-mythical caricatures.

One serious argument against the historicity of the Cretan prophet is chronological. The immense reputation which he enjoyed in all later Greek tradition is based on his visit to Athens; he was invited to purify that city from the guilt incurred when the adherents of Cylon were massacred about 612 B.C. The idea gradually formed itself that this crime was followed quickly by the purification; and the general belief, shared even by Aristotle, was that Epimenides visited Athens about 600 B.C. Plato, however, says that the visit was made about 500 B.C. That alleged first visit is due to later misinterpretation of old religious ideas. Guilt lasted even to the third and fourth generation. In Athens the guilt remained; it was used as a party weapon, and played a great part in politics for a full century. Solon attempted to atone for the guilt, but failed; he employed legal means, whereas this guilt was a religious fact and could not be expiated except by religious means.

Attic tradition mentions no second visit made by Epimenides; he came once and was successful. On his complete success depends his place in the historical memory of Greece. He was not a figure of the developed Hellenic science with the purely Hellenic outlook on life; there was about him something of the 'medicineman' and the seer of visions. Such a personage cannot survive failure. The reputation of the Cretan seer was founded on an eminent and instantaneous success. supposition of a second visit to repair the failure of the first can account for his position in the Greek world. He swept away, once and for ever, the guilt and terror of a bad episode in Athenian history, and in achieving this result he did much more.

No

The eminent witness is Plato, who in 'The Laws' twice refers to the Cretan with the highest respect. Plato describes an incident that occurred about forty years before his own birth and impressed his people both as epochal, because from it originated the alliance between Athens and Cnossos, and as regenerative, because this

Cretan was one of the great inventors who carried out in practice what Hesiod had preached of old, applying precepts of reason and forethought about healthy life to reform the thought and conduct of Athens. Plato clearly refers to an historical fact. Not even the most sceptical of critics imagines that he can be inventing a tale or apologue; yet no one explains how a legendary Epimenides could so quickly impose himself on Athenian memory as a real personage. The Cretan, the Spartan, and the Athenian who talked about him, all recognised in him not only a real person worthy to be ranked alongside of the great discoverers of ancient days, but ' actually a man of yesterday.'

He

Plutarch is one of our principal authorities. lays great stress on the important effects produced by the visit of Epimenides. He describes the Cretan as a great religious figure, who was thought by his contemporaries to be of divine or semi-divine origin, and who purified Athens, reformed the spirit of Athenian life, and changed the half-Oriental features of Attic religion into the more orderly and restrained tone of Hellenism. He tells how Epimenides, by means of certain methods of propitiation and purification and by religious foundations, raised the standard of piety in the city, made the citizens obedient to the spirit of religious law, and put an end to the rage of partisan strife; and he relates a story which connects this visit with the period following the expulsion of the Peisistratidæ about 510 B.C., though he draws no chronological inference from the story. Then after describing the immense effect produced by the visit of the Cretan seer, he resumes the narrative of intestine war, and describes how the old partisan bitterness continued as before. The account is self-contradictory; but, if we read Plutarch in the light of Plato, with Plato's date in our minds, the narrative becomes luminous and self-consistent.

The Cretan belief in Epimenides, as a person whose 'ingenuity does indeed far overleap the heads of all their great men' and as one of the outstanding personages in history, culminated in his apotheosis. He was regarded as a divine man,' and 'a favourite of the gods,' to whom they revealed the truth, and as 'a new Koures or god-priest teaching religious ritual. The Cretan

worship of the deified Epimenides, taken in conjunction with the impression that he made on the Athenian people, is good evidence. To us the very phrase, 'the god Epimenides,' savours of legend. To the early Greeks it was the proof of truth and national importance. Man became at death a god to his own circle of worshippers. The cult of Epimenides was common to a whole city. Brasidas was worshipped at Amphipolis by those whom he saved in 422 B.C.

An early tradition, mentioned by Aristotle and Plutarch, placed Epimenides among the Seven Wise Men. This alone would be proof of historical character. The Seven stand at the threshold of Hellenic history, figures of real importance when Hellenism was being worked into form. A place among the Seven in early tradition is a guarantee of historic reality, for the Seven are the expression of Hellenic fame and historical memory. The Seven all impressed themselves strongly on Greek national history, as distinguished from the politics of a single city; and they must be regarded as real personages of pan-Hellenic quality. Some Hellenes were revolted by the idea that the tyrant Periander should rank among the Seven, and preferred Epimenides in his place; this preference proves, and is founded upon, that general Hellenic respect and admiration which Plato attests. Maximus of Tyre, a rhetorician of the second century after Christ, was certainly acquainted with Plato's allusions, and he read them in the same way.

'There came to Athens also (he says) another Cretan named Epimenides. . . . He was marvellously skilled in the things of God, so that he saved the city of the Athenians when it was perishing through pestilence and sedition; and he was skilful in these matters, not because he had learned them, but, as he related, long sleep and a dream had been his teachers. . . . He had come into relations with the gods and the oracles of the gods and Truth and Justice.'

The story of the 57 years' sleep arose out of these words in Epimenides' Theogony; the expression of a poet was construed too literally; and the number of years was fixed by creative fancy. Maximus twice refers to this passage, which doubtless occurred early in the poem.

The tradition is transmitted also through Aristotle,