We Americans like to think that our literature is unique and that, when we declared independence from Britain, we also declared our independence from European literature. This was not the case. The quintessential American story of Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving bears striking similarities to the ancient Greek story of Epimenides of Knossos.
The Greek historian Diogenes Laertios records in his Life of Epimenides of Knossos that Epimenides was born at Knossos on the island of Krete and that his father was a shepherd. Although he was a Kretan, Epimenides did not look like a Kretan because he wore his hair long, while most Kretans wore their hair short.
Then, one day, while Epimenides was watching his father’s flocks, one of the sheep wandered off and became lost. Epimenides went out to look for the sheep, but he could not find it. Then, at around noon, he became tired, so he went inside a cave underneath Mount Ida and went to sleep. When he woke back up and left the cave, he continued looking for the sheep, but he could not find it anywhere, so he decided to go back to his father’s farm. He was astonished to discover that the farm had completely changed and that a new owner was in charge of it. Confused and frightened, Epimenides went back to his old home and found that the people living there did not know him. Then he met his younger brother, who was now an old man, and discovered that fifty-seven years had passed since he had gone into the cave.
ABOVE: Modern photograph of the mouth of the Idian cave on Krete where Epimenides is said to have slept for fifty-seven years
When the city of Athenai was afflicted by a terrible plague, the Athenians sent emissaries to the oracle at Delphoi, who told them that their city needed to be purified. The Athenians therefore sent a ship under the command of Nikias, son of Nikeratos, to find Epimenides and bring him to Athenai so that he could purify the city. When Epimenides arrived, he took a number of black sheep and a number of white sheep and released them on the Aeropagos, allowing them to graze wherever they desired. He then instructed the Athenians that, wherever one of the sheep laid down, they were the erect an altar and sacrifice the sheep to the Unknown God. The Athenians followed his instructions and the plague came to an end.
ABOVE: Modern photograph of the Aeropagos in Athenai
As a reward for having purified their city, the Athenians voted to award Epimenides a talent of silver and a free ship back home to Krete. Epimenides refused to accept the money, insisting that the only reward he desired was for there to always be peace between Athenai and Knossos. The Athenians granted him this and, from that day forward, Athenai and Knossos never went to war ever again. Diogenes Laertios also records that Epimenides lived to an exceptionally old age, although his sources disagreed regarding the exact number of years that he lived. The writer Phlegon reported that Epimenides lived for 157 years, but the Kretans themselves claimed that Epimenides had lived for 299 years; lastly, the poet and philosopher Xenophanes of Kolophon stated that, according to hearsay, Epimenides had lived to be 154 years old.
The Greek writer Pausanias claims that Epimenides’s death occurred after he was captured by the Spartans during a war against Knossos. The Spartans ordered him to prophesize whether or not their state would be successful. When Epimenides predicted that the Spartans would lose the war, they executed him. After the execution, it was discovered that his skin was covered in tattooed writing. The ephores of Sparta flayed the skin off Epimenides’s body and kept it as a gruesome good luck charm.
Diogenes Laertios reports that the writer Theopompos recorded that, on one occasion, Epimenides had been about to build a temple to the nymphs, but a voice had called down from heaven telling him to build a temple to Zeus instead. Likewise, he tells us that the writer Demetrios had claimed that Epimenides received a special kind of food from the nymphs, which he kept in the hoof of a cow and only ate small doses of it. Supposedly, no one ever saw Epimenides eat anything. Diogenes Laertios also reports that Epimenides had the extraordinary gift of prophecy and that he accurately predicted the outcome of the Battle of Munichia over two hundred years before it happened. He also allegedly predicted the outcome of the Battle of Orchomenos, when the Thebans defeated the Spartans, bringing an end to Spartan dominance after the Peloponnesian War. On account of all these miracles, the Kretans were said to have posthumously declared Epimenides to be a god.
Centuries later, when Saint Paul came to Athenai, he saw one of the altars to the Unknown God that had been erected at Epimenides’s command and used it to introduce the Athenians to the God of the Bible (Acts 17:22-24). During his speech on the Aeropagos, Paul actually directly quotes from one of Epimenides’s own poems, The Kretika: “For in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28a). Epimenides is also quoted in the Epistle to Titus: “The Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies” (Titus 1:12b). Because of this, Epimenides is the only pagan author whose writings are quoted in the New Testament on more than one occasion.
Washington Irving admitted to having based his story of Rip Van Winkle off the German fairy tale of “Peter Klaus,” in which a young goatherd goes looking for a lost goat and stumbles upon some men drinking and playing games in the woods. After tasting some of their wine, he falls asleep for twenty years.
The story of Peter Klaus resembles the story of Epimenides even more closely than the story of Rip Van Winkle because it includes the part about the young herdsman looking for his lost livestock, a detail that Washington Irving omitted from his final version of the story. It is entirely possible that “Peter Klaus” may simply be a variant on the old Greek story, which would make Rip Van Winkle a variant of the story as well.
epimenides= se di ne mi pe… It is albanian language and means= i dont know if you have seen them
The name Epimenides is Ancient Greek, not Albanian, and that etymology you just proposed does not work. We have no reason to think that Epimenides’s name spelled backwards ought to mean anything in any language, let alone in Albanian. The Albanian language is first attested in the fifteenth century, over two thousand years after Epimenides’s time. Although some form of Albanian probably existed in Epimenides’s time, the Albanian language as we know it today certainly did not exist at that time. Furthermore, the message “I don’t know if you have seen them” hardly makes sense as a secret code or anything. I am genuinely not sure where people get all these strange ideas from.