a native of Gnosius in Crete, who seems to have flourished about 594 B.C. and of whom we have several very extraordinary accounts. Being probably a man anxious to distinguish himself, he was not long in perceiving that the readiest way to obtain the object he had in view was to work on the love of the supernatural, a feeling inherent in the minds of an ignorant people. Accordingly we are told that he retired from all intercourse with his countrymen, and no doubt devoted himself to the acquisition of that knowledge which enabled him to act the part which he had chalked out for himself. When he imagined his name forgotten, he reappeared with his hair and beard long and matted, and spread a report that he had slept upwards of two hundred and ninety years. Who does not recognise in this the story of the seven sleepers? In accordance with this spirit of charlatany, he pretended to the gift of prophecy, and to intimate converse with the gods. Yet under all this outward garb of fanaticism he seems to have concealed a profound knowledge of mankind, and to have employed the influence he had acquired in obtaining the sanction of the Cretans to a code of laws constructed on just and sound principles. His fame became so widely spread, that Solon, under pretence of purifying the city of Athens from the blood shed in consequence of civil feuds and dissensions, determined to make use of his influence to prepare the way for the laws which he wished to introduce. A vessel was equipped, and Epimenides having acceded to the invitation given him, assisted in purifying the city, and at the same time prepared the way for the legislation of Solon. He wrote several works, of which the most considerable was a poem on the expedition of the Argonauts; but none of these has come down to us. His life has been written by Diogenes Laertius, but that writer is too credulous to admit of our placing much dependence on the facts he states. See Cic. Die. i. 18, and Leg. ii. 2; Val. Max. viii. 5; Suidas; Plato De Leg.; Pausanias; also, for his age, Vossius De Hist. Graec. Lug. Bat. 1651; Fabricius, Biblioth. Graec. i. 6.