Do you search for a translation or for the original? For an excerpt you can see wikipedia. Epimenides' poem Cretica is quoted twice in the New Testament. In the poem, Minos addresses Zeus thus:
They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one— / The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies! / But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest forever, / For in thee we live and move and have our being. [Please note that the last line is by Aratus, not Epimenides]
The "lie" of the Cretians is that Zeus was mortal; Epimenides considered Zeus immortal. "Cretians, always liars", with the same theological intent as Epimenides, also appears in the Hymn to Zeus of Callimachus.
The second line is quoted, with a veiled attribution ("a prophet of their own"), in the Epistle to Titus, chapter 1, verse 12, to warn Titus about the Cretians. The "prophet" in Titus 1:12 is identified by Clement of Alexandria as Epimenides (Miscellanies, chapter 14). In this passage, Clement mentions that "some say" Epimenides should be counted among the seven wisest philosophers.
Well, I quote from the Wikipedia; "Several prose and poetic works, now lost, were attributed to Epimenides by the Suda" This is the point "now lost", we have only short quotations from this author inside the works of others, such as the New Testament. You can find something more on Suda, that is the Byzantine encyclopedia mentioned by the Wikipedia and you can also check Athenaei, Deipnosophistae, ed. E. Meineke, also mentioned by the Wikipedia, have a look here.
Epimenides Cretica
Posted - 10 Aug 2007 : 16:56:30
