Plutarch (Sept. Sapient. Conviv. p. 157) treats Epimenidês simply as having lived up to the precepts of the Orphic life, or vegetable diet: to this circumstance, I presume, Plato (Legg. iii, p. 677) must be understood to refer, though it is not very clear. See the Fragment of the lost Krêtes of Euripides, p. 98, ed. Dindorf.
Karmanor of Tarrha in Krete had purified Apollo himself for the slaughter of Pytho (Pausan. ii, 30, 3).
[147] Plutarch, De Musicâ, pp. 1134-1146; Pausanias, i, 14, 3.
[148] Cicero (Legg. ii, 11) states that Epimenidês directed a temple to be erected at Athens to Ὕβρις and Ἀναίδεια (Violence and Impudence): Clemens said that he had erected altars to the same two goddesses (Protrepticon, p. 22): Theophrastus said that there were altars at Athens (without mentioning Epimenidês) to these same (ap. Zenobium, Proverb. Cent. iv, 36). Ister spoke of a ἱερὸν Ἀναιδείας at Athens (Istri Fragm. ed. Siebelis, p. 62). I question whether this story has any other foundation than the fact stated by Pausanias, that the stones which were placed before the tribunal of areopagus, for the accuser and the accused to stand upon, were called by these names,—Ὕβρεως, that of the accused; Ἀναιδείας, that of the accuser (i, 28, 5). The confusion between stones and altars is not difficult to be understood. The other story, told by Neanthês of Kyzikus, respecting Epimenidês, that he had offered two young men as human sacrifices, was distinctly pronounced to be untrue by Polemo: and it reads completely like a romance (Athenæus, xiii, p. 602).
[149] Plutarch. Præcept. Reipubl. Gerend. c. 27, p. 820.
[150] Diogen. Laërt. l. c.
[151] Plato, Legg. i, p. 642; Cicero, De Divinat. i, 18; Aristot. Rhet. iii, 17.
Plato places Epimenidês ten years before the Persian invasion of Greece, whereas his real date is near upon 600 B. C.; a remarkable example of carelessness as to chronology.
[152] Respecting the characteristics of this age, see the second chapter of the treatise of Heinrich, above alluded to, Kreta und Griechenland in Hinsicht auf Wunderglauben.
[153] Plato, Kratylus, p. 405; Phædr. p. 244.