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1. Epimenides is a Cretan.
2. Epimenides states, "All Cretans are liars."
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http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080620.html
Wikipedia - <<Legend has it that Cape Sounion is the spot where Aegeus, king of Athens, leapt to his death off the cliff, thus giving his name to the Aegean Sea. The story goes that Aegeus, anxiously looking out from Sounion, despaired when he saw a black sail on his son Theseus 's ship, returning from Crete. This led him to believe that his son had been killed in his contest with the dreaded Minotaur, a monster that was half man and half bull. The Minotaur was confined by its owner, King Minos of Crete, in a specially designed labyrinth. Every year, the Athenians were forced to send 7 boys and 7 girls to Minos as tribute. These youths were placed in the labyrinth to be devoured by the Minotaur. Theseus had volunteered to go with the third tribute and attempt to slay the beast. He had agreed with his father that if he survived the contest, he would hoist a white sail. In fact, Theseus had overcome and slain the Minotaur (Fig.4), but tragically had simply forgotten about the white sail.
The earliest literary reference to Sounion is in Homer's _Odyssey_, probably composed in the 8th century B.C. Homer relates how, as the various Greek commanders sailed back from Troy, the helmsman of King Menelaos of Sparta 's ship, *PHRONTIS* , died at his post while rounding "holy Sounion, cape of Athens". Menelaos landed at Sounion to give *PHRONTIS* full funeral honours (i.e. cremation on a funeral pyre on the beach). The Greek ships were then caught by a storm off Cape Malea and scattered. It was this same storm that separately drove Odysseus' ship off course, to the land of the lotus-eaters (believed to be an island off the north African coast- probably Djerba, Tunisia). From there he sailed to the land of the Cyclops, where he and his surviving men were taken prisoner by Polyphemus. The sea-god was enraged that Odysseus had blinded Poseidon's son, the Cyclops Polyphemus. Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus, but was forbidden to do so by Zeus, the supreme god, in response to pleas from his daughter the goddess Athena, who regarded Odysseus as her protégé and favourite.
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Instead, Poseidon resolved to prevent Odysseus from ever returning home.>>
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<<The famous inscription of George Lord Byron, carved into the base of one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon, presumably dates from his first visit to Greece, on his Grand Tour of Europe, before he acquired fame as a poet. Byron spent several months in 1810-11 in Athens, including two documented visits to Sounion. Byron mentions Sounion in his poem Don Juan:
- Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,
Where the waves and I can only hear,
Our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let me sing and die:
Byron, a passionate philhellene, returned to Greece in July 1823, to support the Greeks in their struggle for freedom from the Ottoman Empire. Based at Messolonghi (Acarnania, western Greece), he spent a substantial part of his own fortune on equipping a fleet and an army. He planned to lead an assault on the crucial Turkish - held fortress of Lepanto (Navpaktos, Aetolia), which dominated the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth. But his plan was thwarted by his death from a fever at Messolonghi April 9, 1824, aged 36.>>
- Byron's body was returned to England *in a brine BARREL*,
for burial in Westminster Abbey (the Church vetoed that,
and Byron was entombed in the family crypt in Hucknall),
but his *HEART* and viscera was inurned in Missolonghi.
The urn exploded years later from the buildup of gases.
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. Finnegans Wake (p. 41)
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(our boys, as our Byron called them) were up
and ashuffle from the HOGShome they lovenaned
The *BARREL*, cross Ebblinn's chilled HAMLET
You could say we are all "moonstruck".