Tiresias: The Ancient Mediterranean Religions Source Database

4479

Diogenes Laertius, Lives Of The Philosophers, 1.112

nan He also compiled prose works On Sacrifices and the Cretan Constitution, also On Minos and Rhadamanthus, running to about 4000 lines. At Athens again he founded the sanctuary of the Solemn Gods (Semnai Theai), as Lobon of Argos tells us in his work On Poets. He is stated to have been the first who purified houses and fields, and the first who founded sanctuaries. Some are found to maintain that he did not go to sleep but withdrew himself for a while, engaged in gathering simples.There is extant a letter of his to Solon the lawgiver, containing a scheme of government which Minos drew up for the Cretans. But Demetrius of Magnesia, in his work on poets and writers of the same name, endeavours to discredit the letter on the ground that it is late and not written in the Cretan dialect but in Attic, and New Attic too. However, I have found another letter by him which runs as follows:Epimenides to Solon

Intertexts (texts cited often on the same page as the searched text):

5 results
1. Plato, Laws, 642e, 642d (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE) 642d. not by outward compulsion but by inner disposition. Thus, so far as I am concerned, you may speak without fear and say all you please. Clin. My story, too, Stranger, when you hear it, will show you that you may boldly say all you wish. You have probably heard how that inspired man Epimenides, who was a family connection of ours, was born in Crete ; and how ten years before the Persian War, in obedience to the oracle of the god, he went to Athens and offered certain sacrifices which the god had ordained; and how, moreover, when the Athenians were alarmed at the Persians’ expeditionary force
2. Aristotle, Athenian Constitution, 1.1 (4th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
3. Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library, 1.9.3, 1.14.1, 1.15.8, 4.1.6, 4.2.5 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE) 1.9.3.  Again, with respect to the antiquity of the human race, not only do Greeks put forth their claims but many of the barbarians as well, all holding that it is they who were autochthonous and the first of all men to discover the things which are of use in life, and that it was the events in their own history which were the earliest to have been held worthy of record. 1.14.1.  Osiris was the first, they record, to make mankind give up cannibalism; for after Isis had discovered the fruit of both wheat and barley which grew wild over the land along with the other plants but was still unknown to man, and Osiris had also devised the cultivation of these fruits, all men were glad to change their food, both because of the pleasing nature of the newly-discovered grains and because it seemed to their advantage to refrain from their butchery of one another. 1.15.8.  And the discovery of the vine, they say, was made by him near Nysa, and that, having further devised the proper treatment of its fruit, he was the first to drink wine and taught mankind at large the culture of the vine and the use of wine, as well as the way to harvest the grape and to store wine. 4.1.6.  And we shall begin with Dionysus because he not only belongs to a very ancient time but also conferred very great benefactions upon the race of men. We have stated in the previous Books that certain barbarian peoples claim for themselves the birthplace of this god. The Egyptians, for example, say that the god who among them bears the name Osiris is the one whom the Greeks call Dionysus. 4.2.5.  After he had received his rearing by the nymphs in Nysa, they say, he made the discovery of wine and taught mankind how to cultivate the vine. And as he visited the inhabited world almost in its entirety, he brought much land under cultivation and in return for this received most high honours at the hands of all men. He also discovered the drink made out of barley and called by some zythos, the bouquet of which is not much inferior to that of wine. The preparation of this drink he taught to those peoples whose country was unsuited to the cultivation of the vine.
4. New Testament, Titus, 1.12 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE) 1.12. One of them, a prophet of their own, said, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and idle gluttons.
5. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of The Philosophers, 1.23, 1.109-1.111, 1.114-1.115, 2.1-2.2 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE) 1.23. After engaging in politics he became a student of nature. According to some he left nothing in writing; for the Nautical Astronomy attributed to him is said to be by Phocus of Samos. Callimachus knows him as the discoverer of the Ursa Minor; for he says in his Iambics:Who first of men the course made plainof those small stars we call the Wain,Whereby Phoenicians sail the main.But according to others he wrote nothing but two treatises, one On the Solstice and one On the Equinox, regarding all other matters as incognizable. He seems by some accounts to have been the first to study astronomy, the first to predict eclipses of the sun and to fix the solstices; so Eudemus in his History of Astronomy. It was this which gained for him the admiration of Xenophanes and Herodotus and the notice of Heraclitus and Democritus. 1.109. 10. EPIMEDESEpimenides, according to Theopompus and many other writers, was the son of Phaestius; some, however, make him the son of Dosiadas, others of Agesarchus. He was a native of Cnossos in Crete, though from wearing his hair long he did not look like a Cretan. One day he was sent into the country by his father to look for a stray sheep, and at noon he turned aside out of the way, and went to sleep in a cave, where he slept for fifty-seven years. After this he got up and went in search of the sheep, thinking he had been asleep only a short time. And when he could not find it, he came to the farm, and found everything changed and another owner in possession. Then he went back to the town in utter perplexity; and there, on entering his own house, he fell in with people who wanted to know who he was. At length he found his younger brother, now an old man, and learnt the truth from him. 1.110. So he became famous throughout Greece, and was believed to be a special favourite of heaven.Hence, when the Athenians were attacked by pestilence, and the Pythian priestess bade them purify the city, they sent a ship commanded by Nicias, son of Niceratus, to Crete to ask the help of Epimenides. And he came in the 46th Olympiad, purified their city, and stopped the pestilence in the following way. He took sheep, some black and others white, and brought them to the Areopagus; and there he let them go whither they pleased, instructing those who followed them to mark the spot where each sheep lay down and offer a sacrifice to the local divinity. And thus, it is said, the plague was stayed. Hence even to this day altars may be found in different parts of Attica with no name inscribed upon them, which are memorials of this atonement. 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. 1.111. The Athenians voted him a talent in money and a ship to convey him back to Crete. The money he declined, but he concluded a treaty of friendship and alliance between Cnossos and Athens.So he returned home and soon afterwards died. According to Phlegon in his work On Longevity he lived one hundred and fifty-seven years; according to the Cretans two hundred and ninety-nine years. Xenophanes of Colophon gives his age as 154, according to hearsay.He wrote a poem On the Birth of the Curetes and Corybantes and a Theogony, 5000 lines in all; another on the building of the Argo and Jason's voyage to Colchis in 6500 lines. 1.114. This is the tenor of the letter. But Demetrius reports a story that he received from the Nymphs food of a special sort and kept it in a cow's hoof; that he took small doses of this food, which was entirely absorbed into his system, and he was never seen to eat. Timaeus mentions him in his second book. Some writers say that the Cretans sacrifice to him as a god; for they say that he had superhuman foresight. For instance, when he saw Munichia, at Athens, he said the Athenians did not know how many evils that place would bring upon them; for, if they did, they would destroy it even if they had to do so with their teeth. And this he said so long before the event. It is also stated that he was the first to call himself Aeacus; that he foretold to the Lacedaemonians their defeat by the Arcadians; and that he claimed that his soul had passed through many incarnations. 1.115. Theopompus relates in his Mirabilia that, as he was building a shrine to the Nymphs, a voice came from heaven: Epimenides, not to the Nymphs but to Zeus, and that he foretold to the Cretans the defeat of the Lacedaemonians by the Arcadians, as already stated; and in very truth they were crushed at Orchomenus.And he became old in as many days as he had slept years; for this too is stated by Theopompus. Myronianus in his Parallels declares that the Cretans called him one of the Curetes. The Lacedaemonians guard his body in their own keeping in obedience to a certain oracle; this is stated by Sosibius the Laconian.There have been two other men named Epimenides, namely, the genealogist and another who wrote in Doric Greek about Rhodes. 2.1. BOOK 2: 1. ANAXIMANDERAnaximander, the son of Praxiades, was a native of Miletus. He laid down as his principle and element that which is unlimited without defining it as air or water or anything else. He held that the parts undergo change, but the whole is unchangeable; that the earth, which is of spherical shape, lies in the midst, occupying the place of a centre; that the moon, shining with borrowed light, derives its illumination from the sun; further, that the sun is as large as the earth and consists of the purest fire.He was the first inventor of the gnomon and set it up for a sundial in Lacedaemon, as is stated by Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History, in order to mark the solstices and the equinoxes; he also constructed clocks to tell the time. 2.2. He was the first to draw on a map the outline of land and sea, and he constructed a globe as well.His exposition of his doctrines took the form of a summary which no doubt came into the hands, among others, of Apollodorus of Athens. He says in his Chronology that in the second year of the 58th Olympiad Anaximander was sixty-four, and that he died not long afterwards. Thus he flourished almost at the same time as Polycrates the tyrant of Samos. There is a story that the boys laughed at his singing, and that, when he heard of it, he rejoined, Then to please the boys I must improve my singing.There is another Anaximander, also of Miletus, a historian who wrote in the Ionic dialect.

Subjects of this text:

subject	book bibliographic info
agurtês /-ai	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181
alcmeonids	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181
anaximander	Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (1989) 52
archimedes	Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (1989) 52
archytas	Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (1989) 52
aristophanes, peace	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181
aristophanes	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181
aristotle, athenaiôn politeia	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181
aristotle	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181
babylonians	Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (1989) 52
bacis	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181
biography/biographical	Despotis and Lohr, Religious and Philosophical Conversion in the Ancient Mediterranean Traditions (2022) 231
chrêsmologos	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181, 182
conversion, models/variations	Despotis and Lohr, Religious and Philosophical Conversion in the Ancient Mediterranean Traditions (2022) 231
conversion, philosophical	Despotis and Lohr, Religious and Philosophical Conversion in the Ancient Mediterranean Traditions (2022) 231
conversion, ritual	Despotis and Lohr, Religious and Philosophical Conversion in the Ancient Mediterranean Traditions (2022) 231
delphi, oracle and lycurgus	Westwood, Moses among the Greek Lawgivers: Reading Josephus’ Antiquities through Plutarch’s Lives (2023) 43
desire	Despotis and Lohr, Religious and Philosophical Conversion in the Ancient Mediterranean Traditions (2022) 231
dillery, john	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181, 182
diogenes laertius	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181, 182; Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (1989) 52
disciple	Despotis and Lohr, Religious and Philosophical Conversion in the Ancient Mediterranean Traditions (2022) 231
divination, and authority	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181, 182
divination, and writing (see textualization)	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 182
eclipse	Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (1989) 52
education/educational	Despotis and Lohr, Religious and Philosophical Conversion in the Ancient Mediterranean Traditions (2022) 231
egypt	Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (1989) 52
epimenides	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181, 182; Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (1989) 52
finnegan, r.	Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (1989) 52
goody, j.	Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (1989) 52
herodotus	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 182
initiation	Despotis and Lohr, Religious and Philosophical Conversion in the Ancient Mediterranean Traditions (2022) 231
inventions	Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (1989) 52
mania, poet as'	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181
mania	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181, 182
orality	Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (1989) 52
paul	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181
philosophy, philosophical, succession	Despotis and Lohr, Religious and Philosophical Conversion in the Ancient Mediterranean Traditions (2022) 231
philosophy, philosophical	Despotis and Lohr, Religious and Philosophical Conversion in the Ancient Mediterranean Traditions (2022) 231
plato	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181
purifications	Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (1989) 52
ritual	Despotis and Lohr, Religious and Philosophical Conversion in the Ancient Mediterranean Traditions (2022) 231
svenbro	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181, 182
thales	Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (1989) 52
theopompus	Johnston and Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination (2005) 181, 182
tradition	Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (1989) 52
way of life	Despotis and Lohr, Religious and Philosophical Conversion in the Ancient Mediterranean Traditions (2022) 231
zaleucus	Westwood, Moses among the Greek Lawgivers: Reading Josephus’ Antiquities through Plutarch’s Lives (2023) 43