The century between 620 and 500 B. C. appears to have been remarkable for the first diffusion and potent influence of distinct religious brotherhoods, mystic rites, and expiatory ceremonies, none of which, as I have remarked in a former chapter, find any recognition in the Homeric epic. To this age belong Thalêtas, Aristeas, Abaris, Pythagoras, Onomakritus, and the earliest provable agency of the Orphic sect.[143] Of the class of men here noticed, Epimenidês, a native of Phæstus or Knossus in Krete,[144] was one of the most celebrated,—and the old legendary connection between Athens and Krete, which shows itself in the tales of Theseus and Minos, is here again manifested in the recourse which the Athenians had to this island to supply their spiritual need. Epimenidês seems to have been connected with the worship of the Kretan Zeus, in whose favor he stood so high as to receive the denomination of the new Kurête[145]—the Kurêtes having been the primitive ministers and organizers of that worship. He was said to be the son of the nymph Baltê; to be supplied by the nymphs with constant food, since he was never seen to eat; to have fallen asleep in his youth in a cave, and to have continued in this state without interruption for fifty-seven years; though some asserted that he remained all this time a wanderer in the mountains, collecting and studying medicinal botany in the vocation of an Iatromantis, or leech and prophet combined. Such narratives mark the idea entertained by antiquity of Epimenidês, the Purifier,[146] who was now called in to heal both the epidemic and the mental affliction prevalent among the Athenian people, in the same manner as his countryman and contemporary Thalêtas had been, a few years before, invited to Sparta to appease a pestilence by the effect of his music and religious hymns.[147] The favor of Epimenidês with the gods, his knowledge of propitiatory ceremonies, and his power of working upon the religious feeling, was completely successful in restoring both health and mental tranquillity at Athens. He is said to have turned out some black and white sheep on the areopagus, directing attendants to follow and watch them, and to erect new altars to the appropriate local deities on the spots where the animals lay down.[148] He founded new chapels and established various lustral 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, are 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. Moreover, Epimenidês had the prudence to associate himself with Solon, and while he thus doubtless