Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/102

 86 HISTORY OF GREECE. various lustra! ceremonies ; and more especially, he regulated the worship paid by the women, in such a manner as to calm the violent impulses which had before agitated them. We know hardly anything of the details of his proceeding, but the general fact of his visit, and the salutary effects produced in removing the religious despondency which oppressed the Athenians, arc well attested : consoling assurances and new ritual precepts, from the lips of a person supposed to stand high in the favor of Zeus, were the remedy which this unhappy disorder required. More- over, Epimenides had the prudence to associate himself with Solon, and while he thus doubtless obtained much valuable advice, he assisted indirectly in exalting the reputation of Solon himself, whose career of constitutional reform was now fast ap- proaching. He remained long enough at Athens to restore completely a more comfortable tone of religious feeling, and then departed, carrying with him universal gratitude and admiration, but refusing all other reward, except a branch from the sacred olive-tree in the acropolis. 1 His life is said to have been pro- longed to the unusual period of one hundred and fifty-four years, according to a statement which was current during the time of his younger contemporary Xenophanes of Kolophon ; 2 and the Kre- tans even ventured to affirm that he lived three hundred years. They extolled him not merely as a sage and a spiritual purifier, but also as a poet, very long compositions on religious and myth- erected at Athens to T/?pf and 'Avaideia (Violence and Impudence): Clemens said that he had erected altars to the same two goddesses (Protrep- tie-on, p. 22): Theophrastus said that there were altars at Athens (without mentioning Epimenides) to these same (ap. Zenobium, Proverb. Cent. iv. 36). Istcr spoke of a lepbv 'Avatdeiaf at Athens (Istri Fragm. ed. Siebelis, p. 62). I question whether this story has any other foundation than the fart stated by Pausanias, that the stones which were placed before the tribunal of arcopagns, for the accuser and the accused to stand upon, were called by these names, "T/?pef, that of the accused ; 'Ava((5ac, that of the accuser (i, 28, 5). The confusion between stones and altars is not difficult to be under- stood. The other story, told by Neanthes of Kyzikus, respecting Epimcni- des, that he had offered two young men as human sacrifices, was distinct!* pronounced to he untrue by Polcmo: and it reads completely like a romanet lAthcnaeus, xiii, p. 602). 1 Plutarch. Prsecept. Reipubl. Gcrend. c. 27, p. 820.
 * Diogen LaOrt. /. c.