Epimenides

Epimenides, a philosopher of Crete of the 7th century B.C., of whom it is fabled that he fell asleep in a cave when a boy, and that he did not awake for 57 years, but it was to find himself endowed with all knowledge and wisdom. He was invited to Athens during a plague to purify the city, on which occasion he performed certain mysterious rites with the effect that the plague ceased. The story afforded Goethe a subject for a drama entitled “Das Epimenides Erwachen,” “in which he symbolises his own aloofness from the great cause of the Fatherland, the result of want of faith in the miraculous power that resides in an enthusiastic outbreak of patriotic feeling.”

Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)

Epilepsy * Epimetheus
[wait for the fun]
Epicharmus
Epictetus
Epicureans
Epicurus
Epicycle
Epidaurus
Epidemic
Epigoni
Epigram
Epilepsy
Epimenides
Epimetheus
Epinal
Epinay, Madame d'
Epiphanius, St.
Epiphany
Epi`rus
Episcopacy
Episcopius, Simon
Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum
Epitaph

Nearby

Epimenides in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable