Case file · Folklore / legend
Epimenides' fifty-seven-year sleep
The Cretan seer Epimenides of Knossos was said to have fallen asleep in a cave while looking for a lost sheep and to have woken 57 years later with the gift of prophecy.
600 BCE · 35.30, 25.16 · status: legend
The account
Diogenes Laertius, writing around AD 230, collects the tradition, adding that Athens called Epimenides in to purify the city after a plague around 600 BC. The tale is an early 'enchanted sleep' story, a motif later found in Rip Van Winkle and in fairy-abduction lore.
The sceptical view
The sources are centuries later than the man, and the sleep is a stock legend attached to a semi-legendary purifier.