formed a favourite subject of conversation at dinnertables; but two brief references in Aristotle show the appreciation of a higher intellect. To him Epimenides was a philosophic interpreter of past history and a theoriser about the nature of society in that early stage when science was still half-poetic in expression. A group of persons living their life in common is called by Aristotle a house,' by Epimenides those who have the same smoke,' * and by the Sicilian law-giver Charondas 'those who have a common flour-bin.' Popular legend expressed the vulgar conception of Epimenides' scientific investigations on such subjects by saying that he lived on food supplied by the Nymphs, which he kept in the hoof of an ox and ate secretly; hence he was troubled by no natural evacuation (a belief which caused in India the deification of a modern hero). Plato describes the same investigations when he says that Epimenides perfected what Hesiod divined.

The bounds between medicine and religion were illdefined; the crowd attached importance to the religious side and forgot the curative treatment. So at Epidauros the records of cure show how the popular mind loved the unscientific. Those records, dedications to the god by patients cured at the temple, contain no trace of medical science. It has been wrongly inferred from this that at Epidauros there was no proper medical treatment; but the uneducated dedicators recorded only the god's beneficent care of themselves. The fact that a certain regimen was prescribed did not interest them; only dreams and religious facts appealed to their mind.

Epimenides, then, was a scientific investigator and a philosophical thinker. Roger Bacon, who stands in a similar relation to religion and philosophy and science, was also surrounded with popular legend; and Michael Scott was so in an even more marked degree. Bacon prided himself more on his theological disquisitions than on his scientific investigations. Perhaps Epimenides did not appreciate fully his scientific position. His mission to Athens, undertaken by order of the Oracle, represents a step in the path towards Hellenic unity, which could be accomplished only through a common religious feeling.

The word is altered by some modern critics; it ended a hexameter.

He investigated critically the nature of Delphian legend, interpreting the old religion, yet regarding it with the spirit of the Hellene who desired to understand what he believed. There was a proverb that in respect of things hidden and mysterious the 'glance' (dépyua) of Epimenides was needed; but that archaic and poetic word, natural in an ancient proverb, lost one letter and became the prosaic dépua, the skin' of Epimenides. The fact that the name of the Cretan passed into a proverb adds something to the picture of his personality.

The Greeks had to live by their religion, not merely to talk about it like modern scholars (often with very faint conception of what religion is), and they saw in him a great religious figure; but his fame rested on a basis of knowledge and practical sense. He thought deeply about medicine and food and social science and the constitution of the family, and about the relation of all those subjects to the divine nature which was the main object of his study; and people said that he was a man beloved by the gods, one to whom they revealed their knowledge. Various works whose titles suggest philosophic or theosophic character are attributed to him, and condemned as forgeries by the German critics. But an opinion based on the assumption that he was unreal and invented needs revision, for his reality depends upon his position in the Hellenic world.

This brings us to Prof. Rendel Harris's brilliant identification of an Epimenidean fragment in Syriac translation, which illuminates the personality of the Cretan; and it is due to Mrs Gibson to acknowledge the scientific spirit in which she placed at Prof. Harris's disposal for publication the results of her work long before this had any chance of seeing the light. The only German critic who has written about Epimenides since Harris's discovery is Gressmann; but none of those who regard the Cretan as an invention of political chicanery will accept as genuine a fragment of a philosophic poem which they condemn as spurious.

In his letter to Titus in Crete, St Paul quotes, without naming him, a line from a Cretan poet, 'Cretans ever liars, noxious beasts, useless gluttons.' Further, in his speech at Athens (delivered before an audience of

Athenians, who crowded to hear an address from one whom they understood to be a candidate for recognition in the leading university of the world) he quotes from 'your own poets' half a line of Aratus, and also a line, in Him we live and move and exist,' whose metrical character is disguised by transformation from the Ionic dialect to the Attic and from the second person to the third. The changes, needed to suit the address, show the Apostle's usual freedom. His words imply two quotations from different poets, although the plain meaning was disregarded by modern commentators, until Prof. Harris saw the truth:

'He is not far from each one of us, for "in Him we live, and move, and have our being," as certain of your poets have said, "for we also are his offspring."

The orator, addressing an educated audience, presses into his service quotations from philosophic poetry which was familiar to society at that time and harmonious with its spirit. The second quotation is taken from Aratus. Who was the author of the first? The Syriac commentary of Ishodad distinguishes the two quotations thus:

'Paul takes both of these from certain heathen poets. Now about this, "In Him we live," etc., because the Cretans said as truth about Zeus, that he was a lord; he was lacerated by a wild boar and buried; and behold! his grave is known amongst us; so therefore Minos, son of Zeus, made an address of praise on behalf of his father; and he said in it:

"The Cretans carved * a tomb for thee, O Holy and High! Liars, hateful beasts, idle gormandisers!

For thou dost not die; ever thou livest and standest

firm;

For in thee we live, and are moved, and exist."

So therefore the Blessed Paul took this sentence from "Minos"; for he took again "We are offspring of God," from Aratus, a poet, who wrote about God.'

* Mrs Gibson has the present tense, but she writes to me that this is a mere slip in printing, as the imperfect is used in the Syriac. I vary the expression used by her in some details, mainly to attain brevity in the sequel.

We have here four lines from an 'address of praise' to the supreme god. The second is the line that St Paul quotes in the Epistle to Titus. Clement of Alexandria declares that Epimenides wrote that line; and Jerome mentions that, although several previous commentators had attributed the verse to Callimachus, yet the real author was Epimenides, who was freely imitated by the later poet. Diogenes says that Epimenides 'composed a work about Minos and Rhadamanthus, 4000 verses in length.' Ishodad then quotes from Aratus, not merely Paul's five words, but the text of about ten lines. As the original Greek is preserved, we can here judge of the character of the Syriac rendering; and its faithfulness is a guarantee of the trustworthiness of the translation from the Minos.'

This Syriac commentator (as Harris declares) is wholly dependent on Theodore of Tarsus; and his words present to us, therefore, the teaching accepted in the Christian Schools of Asia Minor in the fourth century, to the following effect (I combine the various sources). The Blessed Paul, surveying the religious monuments and institutions of the great centre of learning for the Greek world, was struck with the altar to an unknown god,' which rightly or wrongly he regarded as one of those raised in accordance with the instructions of Epimenides; and the connexion recalled to his mind a familiar passage of the Cretan poet, which he quoted in part to Titus. When he was required to address the Court of Areopagus, he took as his text the inscription on this altar and the lines in which Epimenides expressed his conviction about the Eternal God and His relation to man. This 'unknown god' of the altar was a witness to the deep religious feeling in the minds of the Athenians and a confession of ignorance of His true nature. Their own poets had taught truth regarding Him; but it remained for the modern teaching to reveal it fully.

Such is the plain and simple teaching of the fourth century, which is rejected by many modern critics because it runs directly in opposition to the opinions that they cherish. It assumes that St Paul wrote the Pastoral Epistles; it assumes that he was in Athens, and that he delivered a speech there which is reported faithfully in the Acts of the Apostles; but these assumptions are

dismissed as false. Gressmann regards the four lines quoted by Ishodad as a fabrication in Christian interest. There was no poem entitled 'Minos,' containing such a passage; there was only an allusion by Callimachus in his Hymn to Zeus, which was forged into a testimony to the truth of Pauline tradition, with the help of two quotations in pseudo-Pauline parts of the New Testament. This theory, however, is so artificial that it needs no detailed examination here, and I pass from it with only the criticism that in it there is neither reason nor even plausibility. If critics brush away the express statements of ancient learning, they can produce any result they desire; but a history of Greek literature must be founded on authority, and not on modern conjecture in defiance of ancient statements. While this passage of Callimachus resembles in part the lines quoted by Ishodad, it differs widely in spirit and in some details. No mere union of Callimachus with two quotations from the New Testament could produce those four lines; conscious forgery by Christian inventors has to be invoked.

There are only two hypotheses possible in a reasonable judgment. The first is that Ishodad's quotation came from a poem written in Hellenistic time, which purported to be the work of Epimenides but was really an exercise composed after his style in a school of rhetoric. Such exercises were frequently prescribed to pupils in the schools; and this artificial literature sometimes attained considerable excellence and reputation, and was regarded as genuine work of old writers, though it rarely deceived the good ancient critics. It is an allowable hypothesis that a poem 'Minos' had been composed in this way and had acquired wide acceptance as the work of Epimenides, and that this poem was familiar both to Paul from early philosophic training at Tarsus and to his hearers at Athens; for he clearly counted on their familiarity with the work and the certainty that they would connect it with Epimenides, just as they connected the altar with his famous purification of the city.

The other hypothesis is that the 'Minos' was written by Epimenides in later life, when his thought was developed in the Hellenic spirit. In either case the important fact is that this poem was accepted in Athens and in Tarsus as the work of the Cretan prophet. To