In addition to his other spiritual prerogatives, this reviler of
"liars" boasted the power of exorcism; was the first to introduce into
Greece the custom of purifying public places and private abodes, and
was deemed peculiarly successful in banishing those ominous phantoms
which were so injurious to the tranquillity of the inhabitants of
Athens. Such a man was exactly the person born to relieve the fears
of the Athenians, and accomplish the things dictated by the panting
entrails of the sacred victims. Accordingly (just prior to the
Cirrhaean war, B. C. 596), a ship was fitted out, in which an Athenian
named Nicias was sent to Crete, enjoined to bring back the purifying
philosopher, with all that respectful state which his celebrity
demanded. Epimenides complied with the prayer of the Athenians he
arrived at Athens, and completed the necessary expiation in a manner
somewhat simple for so notable an exorcist. He ordered several sheep,
some black and some white, to be turned loose in the Areopagus,
directed them to be followed, and wherever they lay down, a sacrifice
was ordained in honour of some one of the gods. "Hence," says the
historian of the philosophers, "you may still see throughout Athens
anonymous altars (i. e. altars uninscribed to a particular god), the
memorials of that propitiation."

The order was obeyed--the sacrifice performed--and the phantoms were
seen no more. Although an impostor, Epimenides was a man of sagacity
and genius. He restrained the excess of funeral lamentation, which
often led to unseasonable interruptions of business, and conduced to
fallacious impressions of morality; and in return he accustomed the
Athenians to those regular habits of prayer and divine worship, which
ever tend to regulate and systematize the character of a people. He
formed the closest intimacy with Solon, and many of the subsequent
laws of the Athenian are said by Plutarch to have been suggested by