VOLUME IX SLICE VI English Language to Epsom Salts (continued 9)

For the form of the earlier ephod the classic passage is 2 Sam. vi. 14, where David girt in (or with) a linen ephod dances before the ark at its entry into Jerusalem and incurs the unqualified contempt of his wife Michal, the daughter of Saul. Relying upon the known custom of performing certain observances in a practically, or even entirely, nude condition, it seems plausible to infer that the ephod was a scanty wrapping, perhaps a loin-cloth, and this view has found weighty support. On the other hand, the idea of contempt at the exposure of the person, to whatever extent, may not have been so prominent, especially if the custom were not unfamiliar, and it is possible that the sequel refers more particularly to grosser practices attending outbursts of religious enthusiasm.3

The favourite view that the ephod was also an image rests partly upon 1 Sam. xxi. 9, where Goliath’s sword is wrapped in a cloth in the sanctuary of Nob behind the ephod. But it is equally natural to suppose that it hung on a nail in the wall, and apart from the omission of the significant words in the original Septuagint, the possibility that the text read “ark” cannot be wholly ignored (see above; also G.F. Moore, Ency. Bib. col. 1307, n. 2). Again, in the story of Micah’s shrine and the removal of the sacred objects and the Levite priest by the Danites, parallel narratives have been used: the graven and molten images of Judg. xvii. 2-4 corresponding to the ephod and teraphim of ver. 5. Throughout there is confusion in the use of these terms, and the finale refers only to the graven image of Dan (xviii. 30 sq., see 1 Kings xii. 28 sq.). But the combination of ephod and teraphim (as in Hos. iii. 4) is noteworthy, since the fact that the latter were images (1 Sam. xix. 13; Gen. xxxi. 34) could be urged against the view that the former were of a similar character. Finally, according to Judg. viii. 27, Gideon made an ephod of gold, about 70 ℔ in weight, and “put” it in Ophrah. It is regarded as a departure from the worship of Yahweh, although the writer of ver. 33 (cf. also ver. 23) hardly shared this feeling; it was probably something once harmlessly associated with the cult of Yahweh (cf. Calf, Golden), and the term “ephod” may be due to a later hand under the influence of the prophetical teaching referred to above. The present passage is the only one which appears to prove that the ephod was an image, and several writers, including Lotz (Realencyk. f. prot. Theol. vol. v., s.v.), T.C. Foote (pp. 13-18) and A. Maecklenburg (Zeit. f. wissens. Theol., 1906, pp. 433 sqq.) find this interpretation unnecessary.

Archaeological evidence for objects of divination (see, e.g., the interesting details in Ohnefalsch-Richter, Kypros, the Bible and Homer, i. 447 sq.), and parallels from the Oriental area, can be readily cited in support of any of the explanations of the ephod which have been offered, but naturally cannot prove the form which it actually took in Palestine. Since images were clothed, it could be supposed that the diviner put on the god’s apparel (cf. Ency. Bib. col. 1141); but they were also plated, and in either case the transference from a covering to the object covered is intelligible. If the ephod was a loin-cloth, its use as a receptacle and the known evolution of the article find useful analogies (Foote, p. 43 sq., and Ency. Bib. col. 1734 [1]). Finally, if there is no decisive evidence for the view that it was an image (Judg. viii. 27), or that as a wrapping it formed the sole covering of the officiating agent (2 Sam. vi.), all that can safely be said is that it was certainly used in divination and presumably did not differ radically from the ephod of the post-exilic age.

See further, in addition to the monographs already cited, the articles in Hastings’s Dict. Bible (by S.R. Driver), Ency. Bib. (by G.F. Moore), and Jew. Encyc. (L. Ginsburg), and E. Sellin, in Oriental. Studien: Theodor Nöldeke (ed. Bezold, 1906), pp. 699 sqq.

(S. A. C.)

1 Cf. the phrase “ephod of prophecy” (Testament of Levi, viii. 2). The priestly apparatus of the post-exilic age retains several traces of old mythological symbolism and earlier cult, the meaning of which had not altogether been forgotten. With the dress one may perhaps compare the apparel of the gods Marduk and Adad, for which see A. Jeremias, Das Alte Test. im Lichte des Alten Orients, 2nd ed., figs. 33, 46, and pp. 162, 449.

2 The ordinary interpretation “linen ephod” (1 Sam. ii. 18, xxii. 18; 2 Sam. vi. 14) is questioned by T.C. Foote in his useful monograph, Journ. Bibl. Lit. xxi., 1902, pp. 3, 47. This writer also aptly compares the infant Samuel with the child who drew the lots at the temple of Fortuna at Praeneste (Cicero, De divin. ii. 41, 86), and with the modern practice of employing innocent instruments of chance in lotteries (op. cit. pp. 22, 27).

3 It is not stated that the linen ephod was David’s sole covering, and it is difficult to account for the text in the parallel passage 1 Chron. xv. 27 (where he is clothed with a robe); “girt,” too, is ambiguous, since the verb is even used of a sword. On the question of nudity (cf. 1 Sam. xix. 24) see Robertson Smith, Rel. Sem.² pp. 161, 450 sq.; Ency. Bib. s.vv. “girdle,” “sackcloth”; and M. Jastrow, Journ. Am. Or. Soc. xx. 144, xxi. 23. The significant terms “uncover,” “play” (2 Sam. vi. 20 sq.), have other meanings intelligible to those acquainted with the excesses practised in Oriental cults.

EPHOR (Gr. ἔφορος), the title of the highest magistrates of the ancient Spartan state. It is uncertain when the office was created and what was its original character. That it owed its institution to Lycurgus (Herod. i. 65; cf. Xen. Respub. Lacedaem. viii. 3) is very improbable, and we may either regard it as an immemorial Dorian institution (with C.O. Müller, H. Gabriel, H.K. Stein, Ed. Meyer and others), or accept the tradition that it was founded during the first Messenian War, which necessitated a prolonged absence from Sparta on the part of both kings (Plato, Laws, iii. 692 a; Aristotle, Politics, v. 9. 1 = p. 1313 a 26; Plut. Cleomenes, 10; so G. Dum, G. Gilbert, A.H.J. Greenidge). There is no evidence for the theory that originally the ephors were market inspectors; they seem rather to have had from the outset judicial or police functions. Gradually they extended their powers, aided by the jealousy between the royal houses, which made it almost impossible for the two kings to co-operate heartily, and from the 5th to the 3rd century they exercised a growing despotism which Plato justly calls a tyrannis (Laws, 692). Cleomenes III. restored the royal power by murdering four of the ephors and abolishing the office, and though it was revived by Antigonus Doson after the battle of Sellasia, and existed at least down to Hadrian’s reign (Sparta Museum Catalogue, Introd. p. 10), it never regained its former power.

In historical times the ephors were five in number, the first of them giving his name to the year, like the eponymous archon at Athens. Where opinions were divided the majority prevailed. The ephors were elected annually, originally no doubt by the kings, later by the people; their term of office began with the new moon after the autumnal equinox, and they had an official residence (ἐφορεῖον) in the Agora. Every full citizen was eligible and no property qualification was required.

The ephors summoned and presided over meetings of the Gerousia and Apella, and formed the executive committee responsible for carrying out decrees. In their dealings with the kings they represented the supremacy of the people. There was a monthly exchange of oaths, the kings swearing to rule according to the laws, the ephors undertaking on this condition to maintain the royal authority (Xen. Resp. Laced. 15. 7). They alone might remain seated in a king’s presence, and had power to try and even to imprison a king, who must appear before them at the third summons. Two of them accompanied the army in the field, not interfering with the king’s conduct of the campaign, but prepared, if need be, to bring him to trial on his return. The ephors, again, exercised a general guardianship of law and custom and superintended the training of the young. They shared the criminal jurisdiction of the Gerousia and decided civil suits. The administration of taxation, the distribution of booty, and the regulation of the calendar also devolved upon them. They could actually put perioeci to death without trial, if we may believe Isocrates (xii. 181), and were responsible for protecting the state against the helots, against whom they formally declared war on entering office, so as to be able to kill any whom they regarded as dangerous without violating religious scruples. Finally, the ephors were supreme in questions of foreign policy. They enforced, when necessary, the alien acts (ξενηλασία), negotiated with foreign ambassadors, instructed generals, sent out expeditions and were the guiding spirits of the Spartan confederacy.

See the constitutional histories of G. Gilbert (Eng. trans.), pp. 16, 52-59; G. Busolt, p. 84 ff., V. Thumser, p. 241 ff., G.F. Schömann (Eng. trans.), p. 236 ff., A.H.J. Greenidge, p. 102 ff.; Szanto’s article “Ephoroi” in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, v. 2860 ff.; Ed. Meyer, Forschungen zur alten Geschichte, i. 244 ff.; C.O. Müller, Dorians, bk. iii. ch. vii.; G. Grote, History of Greece, pt. ii. ch. vi.; G. Busolt, Griechische Geschichte, i.² 555 ff.; B. Niese, Historische Zeitschrift, lxii. 58 ff. Of the many monographs dealing with this subject the following are specially useful: G. Dum, Entstehung und Entwicklung des spartan. Ephorats (Innsbruck, 1878); H.K. Stein, Das spartan. Ephorat bis auf Cheilon (Paderborn, 1870); K. Kuchtner, Entstehung und ursprüngliche Bedeutung des spartan. Ephorats (Munich, 1897); C. Frick, De ephoris Spartanis (Göttingen, 1872); A. Schaefer, De ephoris Lacedaemoniis (Greifswald, 1863); E. von Stern, Zur Entstehung und ursprünglichen Bedeutung des Ephorats in Sparta (Berlin, 1894).

(M. N. T.)

EPHORUS (c. 400-330 B.C.), of Cyme in Aeolis, in Asia Minor, Greek historian. Together with the historian Theopompus he was a pupil of Isocrates, in whose school he attended two courses of rhetoric. But he does not seem to have made much progress in the art, and it is said to have been at the suggestion of Isocrates himself that he took up literary composition and the study of history. The fruit of his labours was his Ἱστορίαι in 29 books, the first universal history, beginning with the return of the Heraclidae to Peloponnesus, as the first well-attested historical event. The whole work was edited by his son Demophilus, who added a 30th book, containing a summary description of the Social War and ending with the taking of Perinthus (340) by Philip of Macedon (cf. Diod. Sic. xvi. 14 with xvi. 76). Each book was complete in itself, and had a separate title and preface. It is clear that Ephorus made critical use of the best authorities, and his work, highly praised and much read, was freely drawn upon by Diodorus Siculus1 and other compilers. Strabo (viii. p. 332) attaches much importance to his geographical investigations, and praises him for being the first to separate the historical from the merely geographical element. Polybius (xii. 25 g) while crediting him with a knowledge of the conditions of naval warfare, ridicules his description of the battles of Leuctra and Mantineia as showing ignorance of the nature of land operations. He was further to be commended for drawing (though not always) a sharp line of demarcation between the mythical and historical (Strabo ix. p. 423); he even recognized that a profusion of detail, though lending corroborative force to accounts of recent events, is ground for suspicion in reports of far-distant history. His style was high-flown and artificial, as was natural considering his early training, and he frequently sacrificed truth to rhetoric effect; but, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, he and Theopompus were the only historical writers whose language was accurate and finished. Other works attributed to him were:—A Treatise on Discoveries; Respecting Good and Evil Things; On Remarkable Things in Various Countries (it is doubtful whether these were separate works, or merely extracts from the Histories); A Treatise on my Country, on the history and antiquities of Cyme, and an essay On Style, his only rhetorical work, which is occasionally mentioned by the rhetorician Theon. Nothing is known of his life, except the statement in Plutarch that he declined to visit the court of Alexander the Great.

Fragments in C.W. Müller, Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum, i., with critical introduction on the life and writings of Ephorus; see J.A. Klügmann, De Ephoro historico (1860); C.A. Volquardsen, Untersuchungen über die Quellen der griechischen und sicilischen Geschichten bei Diodor. xi.-xvi. (1868); and specially J.B. Bury, Ancient Greek Historians (1909); E. Schwartz, in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyc. s.v.; and article Greece: History: Ancient Authorities.

1 It is now generally recognized, thanks to Volquardsen and others, that Ephorus is the principal authority followed by Diodorus, except in the chapters relating to Sicilian history.

EPHRAEM SYRUS (Ephraim the Syrian), a saint who lived in Mesopotamia during the first three quarters of the 4th century A.D. He is perhaps the most influential of all Syriac authors; and his fame as a poet, commentator, preacher and defender of orthodoxy has spread throughout all branches of the Christian Church. This reputation he owes partly to the vast fertility of his pen—according to the historian Sozomen he was credited with having written altogether 3,000,000 lines—partly to the elegance of his style and a certain measure of poetic inspiration, more perhaps to the strength and consistency of his personal character, and his ardour in defence of the creed formulated at Nicaea.

An anonymous life of Ephraim was written not long after his death in 373. The biography has come down to us in two recensions. But in neither form is it free from later interpolation; and its untrustworthiness is shown by its conflicting with data supplied by his own works, as well as by the manner in which it is overloaded with miraculous events. The following is a probable outline of the main facts of Ephraim’s life. He was born in the reign of Constantine (perhaps in 306) at or near Nisibis. His father was a pagan, the priest of an idol called Abnil or Abizal.1 During his boyhood Ephraim showed a repugnance towards heathen worship, and was eventually driven by his father from the home. He became a ward and disciple of the famous Jacob—the same who attended the Council of Nicaea as bishop of Nisibis, and died in 338. At his hands Ephraim seems to have received baptism at the age of 18 or of 28 (the two recensions differ on this point), and remained at Nisibis till its surrender to the Persians by Jovian in 363. Probably in the course of these years he was ordained a deacon, but from his humble estimate of his own worth refused advancement to any higher degree in the church. He seems to have played an important part in guiding the fortunes of the city during the war begun by Shapur II. in 337, in the course of which Nisibis was thrice unsuccessfully besieged by the Persians (in 338, 346 and 350). The statements of his biographer to this effect accord with the impression we derive from his own poems (Carmina Nisibena, 1-21). His intimate relations with Bishop Jacob were continued with the three succeeding bishops—Babu (338-?349), Vologaeses (?349-361), and Abraham—on all of whom he wrote encomia. The surrender of the city in 363 to the Persians resulted in a general exodus of the Christians, and Ephraim left with the rest. After visiting Amid (Diarbekr) he proceeded to Edessa, and there settled and spent the last ten years of his life. He seems to have lived mainly as a hermit outside the city: his time was devoted to study, writing, teaching and the refutation of heresies. It is possible that during these years he paid a visit to Basil at Caesarea. Near the end of his life he rendered great public service by distributing provisions in the city during a famine. The best attested date for his death is the 9th of June 373. It is clear that this chronology leaves no room for the visit to Egypt, and the eight years spent there in refuting Arianism, which are alleged by his biographer. Perhaps, as has been surmised, there may be confusion with another Ephraim. Nor can he have written the funeral panegyric on Basil who survived him by three months. But with all necessary deductions the biography is valuable as witnessing to the immense reputation for sanctity and for theological acumen which Ephraim had gained in his lifetime, or at least soon after he died. His biographer’s statement as to his habits and appearance is worth quoting, and is probably true:—“From the time he became a monk to the end of his life his only food was barley bread and sometimes pulse and vegetables: his drink was water. And his flesh was dried upon his bones, like a potter’s sherd. His clothes were of many pieces patched together, the colour of dirt. In stature he was little; his countenance was always sad, and he never condescended to laughter. And he was bald and beardless.”

The statement in his Life that Ephraim miraculously learned Coptic falls to the ground with the narrative of his Egyptian visit: and the story of his suddenly learning to speak Greek through the prayer of St Basil is equally unworthy of credence. He probably wrote only in Syriac, though he may have possessed some knowledge of Greek and possibly of Hebrew. But many of his works must have been early translated into other languages; and we possess in MSS. versions into Greek, Armenian, Coptic, Arabic and Ethiopic. The Greek versions occupy three entire volumes of the Roman folio edition, and the extant Armenian versions (mainly of N.T. commentaries) were published at Venice in four volumes in 1836.

It was primarily as a sacred poet that Ephraim impressed himself on his fellow-countrymen. With the exception of his commentaries on scripture, nearly all his extant Syriac works are composed in metre. In many cases the metrical structure is of the simplest, consisting only in the arrangement of the discourse in lines of uniform length—usually heptasyllabic (Ephraim’s favourite metre) or pentasyllabic. A more complicated arrangement is found in other poems, such as the Carmina Nisibena: these are made up of strophes, each consisting of lines of different lengths according to a settled scheme, with a recurring refrain. T.J. Lamy has estimated that, in this class of poems, there are as many as 66 different varieties of metres to be found in the works of Ephraim. These strophic poems were set to music, and sung by alternating choirs of girls. According to Ephraim’s biographer, his main motive for providing these hymns set to music was his desire to counteract the baneful effects produced by the heretical hymns of Bardaiṣan and his son Harmonius, which had enjoyed popularity and been sung among the Edessenes for a century and a half.

The subject-matter of Ephraim’s poems covers all departments of theology. Thus the Roman edition contains (of metrical works) exegetical discourses, hymns on the Nativity of Christ, 65 hymns against heretics, 85 on the Faith against sceptics, a discourse against the Jews, 85 funeral hymns, 4 on freewill, 76 exhortations to repentance, 12 hymns on paradise, and 12 on miscellaneous subjects. The edition of Lamy has added many other poems, largely connected with church festivals. It must be confessed that, judged by Western standards, the poems of Ephraim are prolix and wearisome in the extreme, and are distinguished by few striking poetic beauties. And so far as they are made the vehicle of reasoning, their efficiency is seriously hampered by their poetic form. On the other hand, it is fair to remember that the taste of Ephraim’s countrymen in poetry was very different from ours. As Duval remarks: “quant à la prolixité de saint Éphrem que nous trouvons parfois fastidieuse, on ne peut la condamner sans tenir compte du goût des Syriens qui aimaient les répétitions et les développements de la même pensée, et voyaient des qualités là où nous trouvons des défauts” (Littér. syriaque, p. 19). He is no worse in these respects than the best of the Syriac writers who succeeded him. And he surpasses almost all of them in the richness of his diction, and his skill in the use of metaphors and illustrations.

Of Ephraim as a commentator on Scripture we have only imperfect means of judging. His commentaries on the O.T. are at present accessible to us only in the form they had assumed in the Catena Patrum of Severus (compiled in 861), and to some extent in quotations by later Syriac commentators. His commentary on the Gospels is of great importance in connexion with the textual history of the N.T., for the text on which he composed it was that of the Diatessaron. The Syriac original is lost: but the ancient Armenian version survives, and was published at Venice in 1836 along with Ephraim’s commentary on the Pauline epistles (also only extant in Armenian) and some other works. A Latin version of the Armenian Diatessaron commentary has been made by Aucher and Mösinger (Venice, 1876). Using this version as a clue, J.R. Harris2 has been able to identify a number of Syriac quotations from or references to this commentary in the works of Isho’dadh, Bar-Kepha (Severus), Bar-ṣalibi and Barhebraeus. Although, as Harris points out, it is unlikely that the original text of the Diatessaron had come down unchanged through the two centuries to Ephraim’s day, the text on which he comments was in the main unaffected by the revision which produced the Peshitta. Side by side with this conclusion may be placed the result of F.C. Burkitt’s3 careful examination of the quotations from the Gospels in the other works of Ephraim; he shows conclusively that in all the undoubtedly genuine works the quotations are from a pre-Peshitta text.

As a theologian, Ephraim shows himself a stout defender of Nicaean orthodoxy, with no leanings in the direction of either the Nestorian or the Monophysite heresies which arose after his time. He regarded it as his special task to combat the views of Marcion, of Bardaiṣan and of Mani.

To the modern historian Ephraim’s main contribution is in the material supplied by the 72 hymns4 known as Carmina Nisibena and published by G. Bickell in 1866. The first 20 poems were written at Nisibis between 350 and 363 during the Persian invasions; the remaining 52 at Edessa between 363 and 373. The former tell us much of the incidents of the frontier war, and particularly enable us to reconstruct in detail the history of the third siege of Nisibis in 350.

Of the many editions of Ephraim’s works a full list is given by Nestle in Realenk. f. protest. Theol. und Kirche (3rd ed.). For modern students the most important are: (1) the great folio edition in 6 volumes (3 of works in Greek and 3 in Syriac), in which the text is throughout accompanied by a Latin version (Rome, 1732-1746); on the unsatisfactory character of this edition (which includes many works that are not Ephraim’s) and especially of the Latin version, see Burkitt, Ephraim’s Quotations, pp. 4 sqq.; (2) Carmina Nisibena, edited with a Latin translation by G. Bickell (Leipzig, 1866); (3) Hymni et sermones, edited with a Latin translation by T.J. Lamy (4 vols., Malines, 1882-1902). Many selected homilies have been edited or translated by Overbeck, Zingerle and others (cf. Wright, Short History, pp. 35 sqq.); a selection of the Hymns was translated by H. Burgess, Select Metrical Hymns of Ephrem Syrus (1853). Of the two recensions of Ephraim’s biography, one was edited in part by J.S. Assemani (B.O. i. 26 sqq.) and in full by S.E. Assemani in the Roman edition (iii. pp. xxiii.-lxiii.); the other by Lamy (ii. 5-90) and Bedjan (Acta mart. et sanct. iii. 621-665). The long poem on the history of Joseph, twice edited by Bedjan (Paris, 1887 and 1891) and by him attributed to Ephraim, is more probably the work of Balai.

(N. M.)

1 It is true that in the Confession attributed to him and printed among his Greek works in the first volume of the Roman edition he speaks (p. 129) of his parents as having become martyrs for the Christian faith. But this document is of very doubtful authenticity.

2 Fragments of the Commentary of Ephrem Syrus upon the Diatessaron (London, 1895).

3 “Ephraim’s Quotations from the Gospel,” in Texts and Studies, vol. vii. (Cambridge, 1901).

4 There were originally 77, but 5 have perished.

EPHRAIM, a tribe of Israel, called after the younger son of Joseph, who in his benediction exalted Ephraim over the elder brother Manasseh (Gen. xlviii.). These two divisions were often known as the “house of Joseph” (Josh. xvii. 14 sqq.; Judg. i. 22; 2 Sam. xix. 20; 1 Kings xi. 28). The relations between them are obscure; conflicts are referred to in Is. ix. 21,1 and Ephraim’s proud and ambitious character is indicated in its demands as narrated in Josh. xvii. 14; Judg. viii. 1-3, xii. 1-6. throughout, Ephraim played a distinctive and prominent part; it probably excelled Manasseh in numerical strength, and the name became a synonym for the northern kingdom of Israel. Originally the name may have been a geographical term for the central portion of Palestine. Regarded as a tribe, it lay to the north of Benjamin, which traditionally belongs to it; but whether the young “brother” (see Benjamin) sprang from it, or grew up separately, is uncertain. Northwards, Ephraim lost itself in Manasseh, even if it did not actually include it (Judg. i. 27; 1 Chron. vii. 29); the boundaries between them can hardly be recovered. Ephraim’s strength lay in the possession of famous sites: Shechem, with the tomb of the tribal ancestor, also one of the capitals; Shiloh, at one period the home of the ark; Timnath-Serah (or Heres), the burial-place of Joshua; and Samaria, whose name was afterwards extended to the whole district (see Samaria).

Shechem itself was visited by Abraham and Jacob, and the latter bought from the sons of Hamor a burial-place (Gen. xxxiii. 19). The story of Dinah may imply some early settlement of tribes in its vicinity (but see Simeon), and the reference in Gen. xlviii. 22 (see R.V. marg.) alludes to its having been forcibly captured. But how this part of Palestine came into the hands of the Israelites is not definitely related in the story of the invasion (see Joshua).

A careful discussion of the Biblical data referring to Ephraim is given by H.W. Hogg, Ency. Bib., s.v. On the characteristic narratives which appear to have originated in Ephraim (viz. the Ephraimite or Elohist source, E), see Genesis and Bible: Old Testament Criticism. See further Abimelech; Gideon; Manasseh; and Jews: History.

1 Inter-tribal feuds during the period of the monarchy may underlie the events mentioned in 1 Kings xvi. 9 sq., 21 sq.; 2 Kings xv. 10, 14.

EPHTHALITES, or White Huns. This many-named and enigmatical tribe was of considerable importance in the history of India and Persia in the 5th and 6th centuries, and was known to the Byzantine writers, who call them Ἐφθαλίτοι, Εὐθαγίτοι Νεφθαλίτοι or Ἀβδελοί. The last of these is an independent attempt to render the original name, which was probably something like Aptal or Haptal, but the initial Ν of the third is believed to be a clerical error. They were also called Λευκοὶ Οὔννοι or Χοῦνοι, White (that is fair-skinned) Huns. In Arabic and Persian they are known as Haital and in Armenian as Haithal, Idal or Hepthal. The Chinese name Yetha seems an attempt to represent the same sound. In India they were called Hūnas. Ephthalite is the usual orthography, but Hephthalite is perhaps more correct.

Our earliest information about the Ephthalites comes from the Chinese chronicles, in which it is stated that they were originally a tribe of the great Yue-Chi (q.v.), living to the north of the Great Wall, and in subjection to the Jwen-Jwen, as were also the Turks at one time. Their original name was Hoa or Hoa-tun; subsequently they styled themselves Ye-tha-i-li-to after the name of their royal family, or more briefly Ye-tha. Before the 5th century A.D. they began to move westwards, for about 420 we find them in Transoxiana, and for the next 130 years they were a menace to Persia, which they continually and successfully invaded, though they never held it as a conquest. The Sassanid king, Bahram V., fought several campaigns with them and succeeded in keeping them at bay, but they defeated and killed Peroz (Firūz), A.D. 484. His son Kavadh I. (Kobad), being driven out of Persia, took refuge with the Ephthalites, and recovered his throne with the assistance of their khan, whose daughter he had married, but subsequently he engaged in prolonged hostilities with them. The Persians were not quit of the Ephthalites until 557 when Chosroes Anushirwan destroyed their power with the assistance of the Turks, who now make their first appearance in western Asia.

The Huns who invaded India appear to have belonged to the same stock as those who molested Persia. The headquarters of the horde were at Bamian and at Balkh, and from these points they raided south-east and south-west. Skandagupta repelled an invasion in 455, but the defeat of the Persians in 484 probably stimulated their activity, and at the end of the 5th century their chief Toromana penetrated to Malwa in central India and succeeded in holding it for some time. His son Mihiragula (c. 510-540) made Sakāla in the Punjab his Indian capital, but the cruelty of his rule provoked the Indian princes to form a confederation and revolt against him about 528. He was not, however, killed, but took refuge in Kashmir, where after a few years he seized the throne and then attacked the neighbouring kingdom of Gandhara, perpetrating terrible massacres. About a year after this he died (c. 540), and shortly afterwards the Ephthalites collapsed under the attacks of the Turks. They do not appear to have moved on to another sphere, as these nomadic tribes often did when defeated, and were probably gradually absorbed in the surrounding populations. Their political power perhaps continued in the Gurjara empire, which at one time extended to Bengal in the east and the Nerbudda in the south, and continued in a diminished form until A.D. 1040. These Gurjaras appear to have entered India in connexion with the Hunnish invasions.

Our knowledge of the Indian Hūnas is chiefly derived from coins, from a few inscriptions distributed from the Punjab to central India, and from the account of the Chinese pilgrim Hsùan Tsang, who visited the country just a century after the death of Mihiragula. The Greek monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, who visited India about 530, describes the ruler of the country, whom he calls Gollas, as a White Hun king, who exacted an oppressive tribute with the help of a large army of cavalry and war elephants. Gollas no doubt represents the last part of the name Mihiragula or Mihirakula.

The accounts of the Ephthalites, especially those of the Indian Hūnas, dwell on their ferocity and cruelty. They are represented as delighting in massacres and torture, and it is said that popular tradition in India still retains the story that Mihiragula used to amuse himself by rolling elephants down a precipice and watching their agonies. Their invasions shook Indian society and institutions to the foundations, but, unlike the earlier Kushans, they do not seem to have introduced new ideas into India or have acted as other than a destructive force, although they may perhaps have kept up some communication between India and Persia. The first part of Mihiragula seems to be the name of the Persian deity Mithra, but his patron deity was Śiva, and he left behind him the reputation of a ferocious persecutor of Buddhism. Many of his coins bear the Nandi bull (Śiva’s emblem), and the king’s name is preceded by the title śahi (shah), which had previously been used by the Kushan dynasty. Toramana’s coins are found plentifully in Kashmir, which, therefore, probably formed part of the Hūna dominions before Mihiragula’s time, so that when he fled there after his defeat he was taking refuge, if not with his own subjects, at least with a kindred clan.

Greek writers give a more flattering account of the Ephthalites, which may perhaps be due to the fact that they were useful to the East Roman empire as enemies of Persia and also not dangerously near. Procopius says that they were far more civilized than the Huns of Attila, and the Turkish ambassador who was received by Justin is said to have described them as ἀστικοί, which may merely mean that they lived in the cities which they conquered. The Chinese writers say that their customs were like those of the Turks; that they had no cities, lived in felt tents, were ignorant of writing and practised polyandry. Nothing whatever is known of their language, but some scholars explain the names Toramana and Jauvla as Turkish.

For the possible connexion between the Ephthalites and the European Huns see Huns. The Chinese statement that the Hoa or Ye-tha were a section of the great Yue-Chi, and that their customs resembled those of the Turks (Tu-Kiue), is probably correct, but does not amount to much, for the relationship did not prevent them from fighting with the Yue-Chi and Turks, and means little more than that they belonged to the warlike and energetic section of central Asian nomads, which is in any case certain. They appear to have been more ferocious and less assimilative than the other conquering tribes. This may, however, be due to the fact that their contact with civilization was so short; the Yue-Chi and Turks had had some commerce with more advanced races before they played any part in political history, but the Ephthalites appear as raw barbarians, and were annihilated as a nation in little more than a hundred years. Like the Yue-Chi they have probably contributed to form some of the physical types of the Indian population, and it is noticeable that polyandry is a recognized institution among many Himalayan tribes, and is also said to be practised secretly by the Jats and other races of the plains.

Among original authorities may be consulted Procopius, Menander Protector, Cosmas Indicopleustes (trans. McCrindle, Hakluyt Society, 1897), the Kashmir chronicle Rajataranginî (trans. Stein, 1900, and Yüan Chwang). See also A. Stein, White Huns and Kindred Tribes (1905); O. Franke, Beiträge aus chinesischen Quellen zur Kenntnis der Türkvölker und Skythen (1904); Ujfalvy, Mémoire sur les Huns Blancs (1898); Drouin, Mémoire sur les Huns Ephthalites (1895); and various articles by Vincent Smith, Specht, Drouin, and E.H. Parker in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Journal asiatique, Revue numismatique, Asiatic Quarterly, &c.

(C. El.)

ÉPI, the French architectural term for a light finial, generally of metal, but sometimes of terra-cotta, forming the termination of a spire or the angle of a roof.

EPICENE (from the Gr. ἐπίκοινος, common), a term in Greek and Latin grammar denoting nouns which, possessing but one gender, are used to describe animals of either sex. In English grammar there are no true epicene nouns, but the term is sometimes used instead of common gender. In figurative and literary language, epicene is an adjective applied to persons having the characteristics of both sexes, and hence is occasionally used as a synonym of “effeminate.”

EPICHARMUS (c. 540-450 B.C.), Greek comic poet, was born in the island of Cos. Early in life he went to Megara in Sicily, and after its destruction by Gelo (484) removed to Syracuse, where he spent the rest of his life at the court of Hiero, and died at the age of ninety or (according to a statement in Lucian, Macrobii, 25) ninety-seven. A brazen statue was set up in his honour by the inhabitants, for which Theocritus composed an inscription (Epigr. 17). Epicharmus was the chief representative of the Sicilian or Dorian comedy. Of his works 35 titles and a few fragments have survived. In the city of tyrants it would have been dangerous to present comedies like those of the Athenian stage, in which attacks were made upon the authorities. Accordingly, the comedies of Epicharmus are of two kinds, neither of them calculated to give offence to the ruler. They are either mythological travesties (resembling the satyric drama of Athens) or character comedies. To the first class belong the Busiris, in which Heracles is represented as a voracious glutton; the Marriage of Hebe, remarkable for a lengthy list of dainties. The second class dealt with different classes of the population (the sailor, the prophet, the boor, the parasite). Some of the plays seem to have bordered on the political, as The Plunderings, describing the devastation of Sicily in the time of the poet. A short fragment has been discovered (in the Rainer papyri) from the Ὁδυσσεὺς αὐτόμολος, which told how Odysseus got inside Troy in the disguise of a beggar and obtained valuable information. Another feature of his works was the large number of excellent sentiments expressed in a brief proverbial form; the Pythagoreans claimed him as a member of their school, who had forsaken the study of philosophy for the writing of comedy. Plato (Theaetetus, 152 E) puts him at the head of the masters of comedy, coupling his name with Homer and, according to a remark in Diogenes Laërtius, Plato was indebted to Epicharmus for much of his philosophy. Ennius called his didactic poem on natural philosophy Epicharmus after the comic poet. The metres employed by Epicharmus were iambic trimeter, and especially trochaic and anapaestic tetrameter. The plot of the plays was simple, the action lively and rapid; hence they were classed among the fabulae motoriae (stirring, bustling), as indicated in the well-known line of Horace (Epistles, ii. 1. 58):

“Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi.”

Epicharmus is the subject of articles in Suidas and Diogenes Laërtius (viii. 3). See A.O. Lorenz, Leben und Schriften des Koers E. (with account of the Doric drama and fragments, 1864); J. Girard, Études sur la poésie grecque (1884); Kaibel in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie, according to whom Epicharmus was a Siceliot; for the papyrus fragment, Blass in Jahrbücher für Philologie, cxxxix., 1889.

EPIC POETRY, or Epos (from the Gr. ἔπος, a story, and ἐπικός, pertaining to a story), the names given to the most dignified and elaborate forms of narrative poetry. The word epopee is also, but more rarely, employed to designate the same thing, ἐποποιὸς in Greek being a maker of epic poetry, and ἐποποιΐα what he makes.

It is to Greece, where the earliest literary monuments which we possess are of an epical character, that we turn for a definition of these vast heroic compositions, and we gather that their subject-matter was not confined, as Voltaire and the critics of the 18th century supposed, to “narratives in verse of warlike adventures.” When we first discover the epos, hexameter verse has already been selected for its vehicle. In this form epic poems were composed not merely dealing with war and personal romance, but carrying out a didactic purpose, or celebrating the mysteries of religion. These three divisions, to which are severally attached the more or less mythical names of Homer, Hesiod and Orpheus seem to have marked the earliest literary movement of the Greeks. But, even here, we must be warned that what we possess is not primitive; there had been unwritten epics, probably in hexameters, long before the composition of any now-surviving fragment. The saga of the Greek nation, the catalogue of its arts and possessions, the rites and beliefs of its priesthood, must have been circulated, by word of mouth, long before any historical poet was born. We look upon Homer and Hesiod as records of primitive thought, but Professor Gilbert Murray reminds us that “our Iliad, Odyssey, Erga and Theogony are not the first, nor the second, nor the twelfth of such embodiments.” The early epic poets, Lesches, Linus, Orpheus, Arctinus, Eugammon are the veriest shadows, whose names often betray their symbolic and fabulous character. It is now believed that there was a class of minstrels, the Rhapsodists or Homeridae, whose business it was to recite poetry at feasts and other solemn occasions. “The real bards of early Greece were all nameless and impersonal.” When our tradition begins to be preserved, we find everything of a saga-character attributed to Homer, a blind man and an inhabitant of Chios. This gradually crystallized until we find Aristotle definitely treating Homer as a person, and attributing to him the composition of three great poems, the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Margites, now lost (see Homer). The first two of these have been preserved and form for us the type of the ancient epic; when we speak of epic poetry, we unconsciously measure it by the example of the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is quite certain, however, that these poems had not merely been preceded by a vast number of revisions of the mythical history of the country, but were accompanied by innumerable poems of a similar character, now entirely lost. That antiquity did not regard these other epics as equal in beauty to the Iliad seems to be certain; but such poems as Cypria, Iliou Persis (Sack of Ilion) and Aethiopis can hardly but have exhibited other sides of the epic tradition. Did we possess them, it is almost certain that we could speak with more assurance as to the scope of epic poetry in the days of oral tradition, and could understand more clearly what sort of ballads in hexameter it was which rhapsodes took round from court to court. In the 4th century B.C. it seems that people began to write down what was not yet forgotten of all this oral poetry. Unfortunately, the earliest critic who describes this process is Proclus, a Byzantine neo-Platonist, who did not write until some 800 years later, when the whole tradition had become hopelessly corrupted. When we pass from Homer and Hesiod, about whose actual existence critics will be eternally divided, we reach in the 7th century a poet, Peisander of Rhodes, who wrote an epic poem, the Heracleia, of which fragments remain. Other epic writers, who appear to be undoubtedly historic, are Antimachus of Colophon, who wrote a Thebais; Panyasis, who, like Peisander, celebrated the feats of Heracles; Choerilus of Samos; and Anyte, of whom we only know that she was an epic poetess, and was called “The female Homer.” In the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. there was a distinct school of philosophical epic, and we distinguish the names of Xenophanes, Parmenides and Empedocles as the leaders of it.

From the dawn of Latin literature epic poetry seems to have been cultivated in Italy. A Greek exile, named Livius Andronicus, translated the Odyssey into Latin during the first Punic War, but the earliest original epic of Rome was the lost Bellum Punicum of Naevius, a work to which Virgil was indebted. A little later, Ennius composed, about 172 B.C., in 18 books, an historical epic of the Annales, dealing with the whole chronicle of Rome. This was the foremost Latin poem, until the appearance of the Aeneid; it was not imitated, remaining, for a hundred years, as Mr Mackail has said, “not only the unique, but the satisfying achievement in this kind of poetry.” Virgil began the most famous of Roman epics in the year 30 B.C., and when he died, nine years later, he desired that the MS. of the Aeneid should be burned, as it required three years’ work to complete it. Nevertheless, it seems to us, and seemed to the ancient world, almost perfect, and a priceless monument of art; it is written, like the great Greek poems on which it is patently modelled, in hexameters. In the next generation, the Pharsalia of Lucan, of which Cato, as the type of the republican spirit, is the hero, was the principal example of Latin epic. Statius, under the Flavian emperors, wrote several epic poems, of which the Thebaid survives. In the 1st century A.D. Valerius Flaccus wrote the Argonautica in 8 books, and Silius Italicus the Punic War, in 17 books; these authors show a great decline in taste and merit, even in comparison with Statius, and Silius Italicus, in particular, is as purely imitative as the worst of the epic writers of modern Europe. At the close of the 4th century the style revived with Claudian, who produced five or six elaborate historical and mythological epics of which the Rape of Proserpine was probably the most remarkable; in his interesting poetry we have a valuable link between the Silver Age in Rome and the Italian Renaissance. With Claudian the history of epic poetry among the ancients closes.

In medieval times there existed a large body of narrative poetry to which the general title of Epic has usually been given. Three principal schools are recognized, the French, the Teutonic and the Icelandic. Teutonic epic poetry deals, as a rule, with legends founded on the history of Germany in the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries, and in particular with such heroes as Ermanaric, Attila and Theodoric. But there is also an important group in it which deals with English themes, and among these Beowulf, Waldere, The Lay of Maldon and Finnesburh are pre-eminent. To this group is allied the purely German poem of Hildebrand, attributed to c. 800. Among these Beowulf is the only one which exists in anything like complete form, and it is of all examples of Teutonic epic the most important. With all its trivialities and incongruities, which belong to a barbarous age, Beowulf is yet a solid and comprehensive example of native epic poetry. It is written, like all old Teutonic work of the kind, in alliterative unrhymed rhythm. In Iceland, a new heroic literature was invented in the middle ages, and to this we owe the Sagas, which are, in fact, a reduction to prose of the epics of the warlike history of the North. These Sagas took the place of a group of archaic Icelandic epics, the series of which seems to have closed with the noble poem of Atlamál, the principal surviving specimen of epic poetry as it was cultivated in the primitive literature of Iceland. The surviving epical fragments of Icelandic composition are found thrown together in the Codex Regius, under the title of The Elder Edda, a most precious MS. discovered in the 17th century. The Icelandic epics seem to have been shorter and more episodical in character than the lost Teutonic specimens; both kinds were written in alliterative verse. It is not probable that either possessed the organic unity and vitality of spirit which make the Sagas so delightful. The French medieval epics (see Chansons de Geste) are late in comparison with those of England, Germany and Iceland. They form a curious transitional link between primitive and modern poetry; the literature of civilized Europe may be said to begin with them. There is a great increase of simplicity, a great broadening of the scene of action. The Teutonic epics were obscure and intense, the French chansons de geste are lucid and easy. The existing masterpiece of this kind, the magnificent Roland, is doubtless the most interesting and pleasing of all the epics of medieval Europe. Professor Ker’s analysis of its merits may be taken as typical of all that is best in the vast body of epic which comes between the antique models, which were unknown to the medieval poets, and the artificial epics of a later time which were founded on vast ideal themes, in imitation of the ancients. “There is something lyrical in Roland, but the poem is not governed by lyrical principles; it requires the deliberation and the freedom of epic; it must have room to move in before it can come up to the height of its argument. The abruptness of its periods is not really an interruption of its even flight; it is an abruptness of detail, like a broken sea with a larger wave moving under it; it does not impair or disguise the grandeur of the movement as a whole.” Of the progress and decline of the chansons de geste (q.v.) from the ideals of Roland a fuller account is given elsewhere. To the Nibelungenlied (q.v.) also, detailed attention is given in a separate article.

What may be called the artificial or secondary epics of modern Europe, founded upon an imitation of the Iliad and the Aeneid, are more numerous than the ordinary reader supposes, although but few of them have preserved much vitality. In Italy the Chanson de Roland inspired romantic epics by Luigi Pulci (1432-1487), whose Morgante Maggiore appeared in 1481, and is a masterpiece of burlesque; by M.M. Boiardo (1434-1494), whose Orlando Innamorato was finished in 1486; by Francesco Bello (1440?-1495), whose Mambriano was published in 1497; by Lodovico Ariosto (q.v.), whose Orlando Furioso, by far the greatest of its class, was published in 1516, and by Luigi Dolce (1508-1568), as well as by a great number of less illustrious poets. G.G. Trissino (1478-1549) wrote a Deliverance of Italy from the Goths in 1547, and Bernardo Tasso (1493-1569) an Amadigi in 1559; Berni remodelled the epic of Boiardo in 1541, and Teofilo Folengo (1491-1544), ridiculed the whole school in an Orlandino of 1526. An extraordinary feat of mock-heroic epic was The Bucket (1622) of Alessandro Tassoni (1565-1638). The most splendid of all the epics of Italy, however, was, and remains, the Jerusalem Delivered of Torquato Tasso (q.v.), published originally in 1580, and afterwards rewritten as The Conquest of Jerusalem, 1593. The fantastic Adone (1623) of G.B. Marini (1569-1625) and the long poems of Chiabrera, close the list of Italian epics. Early Portuguese literature is rich in epic poetry. Luis Pereira Brandão wrote an Elegiada in 18 books, published in 1588; Jeronymo Corte-Real (d. 1588) a Shipwreck of Sepulveda and two other epics; V.M. Quevedo, in 1601, an Alphonso of Africa, in 12 books; Sá de Menezes (d. 1664) a Conquest of Malacca, 1634; but all these, and many more, are obscured by the glory of Camoens (q.v.), whose magnificent Lusiads had been printed in 1572, and forms the summit of Portuguese literature. In Spanish poetry, the Poem of the Cid takes the first place, as the great national epic of the middle ages; it is supposed to have been written between 1135 and 1175. It was followed by the Rodrigo, and the medieval school closes with the Alphonso XI. of Rodrigo Yañez, probably written at the close of the 12th century. The success of the Italian imitative epics of the 15th century led to some imitation of their form in Spain. Juan de la Cueva (1550?-1606) published a Conquest of Bética in 1603; Cristóbal de Virues (1550-1610) a Monserrate, in 1588; Luis Barahona de Soto continued Ariosto in a Tears of Angélica; Gutiérrez wrote an Austriada in 1584; but perhaps the finest modern epic in Spanish verse is the Araucana (1569-1590) of Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (1533-1595), “the first literary work of merit,” as Mr Fitzmaurice-Kelly remarks, “composed in either American continent.” In France, the epic never flourished in modern times, and no real success attended the Franciade of Ronsard, the Alaric of Scudéry, the Pucelle of Chapelain, the Divine Épopée of Soumet, or even the Henriade of Voltaire. In English literature The Faery Queen of Spenser has the same claim as the Italian poems mentioned above to bear the name of epic, and Milton, who stands entirely apart, may be said, by his isolated Paradise Lost, to take rank with Homer and Virgil, as one of the three types of the mastery of epical composition.

See Bossu, Traité du poeme épique (1675); Voltaire, Sur la poésie épique; Fauviel, L’Origine de l’épopée chevaleresque (1832); W.P. Ker, Epic and Romance (1897), and Essays in Medieval Literature (1905); Gilbert Murray, History of Ancient Greek Literature (1897); W. von Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur (1879); Gaston Paris, La Littérature française au moyen âge (1890); Léon Gautier, Les Épopées françaises (1865-1868). For works on the Greek epics see also Greek Literature and Cycle.

(E. G.)

EPICTETUS (born c. A.D. 60), Greek philosopher, was probably a native of Hierapolis in south-west Phrygia. The name Epictetus is merely the Greek for “acquired” (from ἐπικτᾶσθαι); his original name is not known. As a boy he was a slave in the house of Epaphroditus, a freedman and courtier of the emperor Nero. He managed, however, to attend the lectures of the Stoic Musonius Rufus, and subsequently became a freedman. He was lame and of weakly health. In 90 he was expelled with the other philosophers by Domitian, who was irritated by the support and encouragement which the opposition to his tyranny found amongst the adherents of Stoicism. For the rest of his life he settled at Nicopolis, in southern Epirus, not far from the scene of the battle of Actium. There for several years he lived, and taught by close earnest personal address and conversation. According to some authorities he lived into the time of Hadrian; he himself mentions the coinage of the emperor Trajan. His contemporaries and the next generation held his character and teaching in high honour. According to Lucian, the earthenware lamp which had belonged to the sage was bought by an antiquarian for 3000 drachmas. He was never married. He wrote nothing; but much of his teaching was taken down with affectionate care by his pupil Flavius Arrianus, the historian of Alexander the Great, and is preserved in two treatises, of the larger of which, called the Discourses of Epictetus (Διατριβαί), four books are still extant. The other treatise is a shorter and more popular work, the Encheiridion (“Handbook”). It contains in an aphoristic form the main doctrines of the longer work.

The philosophy of Epictetus is intensely practical, and exhibits a high idealistic type of morality. He is an earnest, sometimes stern and sometimes pathetic, preacher of righteousness, who despises the mere graces of style and the subtleties of an abstruse logic. He has no patience with mere antiquarian study of the Stoical writers. The problem of how life is to be carried out well is the one question which throws all other inquiries into the shade. True education lies in learning to wish things to be as they actually are; it lies in learning to distinguish what is our own from what does not belong to us. But there is only one thing which is fully our own,—that is, our will or purpose. God, acting as a good king and a true father, has given us a will which cannot be restrained, compelled or thwarted. Nothing external, neither death nor exile nor pain nor any such thing, can ever force us to act against our will; if we are conquered, it is because we have willed to be conquered. And thus, although we are not responsible for the ideas that present themselves to our consciousness, we are absolutely and without any modification responsible for the way in which we use them. Nothing is ours besides our will. The divine law which bids us keep fast what is our own forbids us to make any claim to what is not ours; and while enjoining us to make use of whatever is given to us, it bids us not long after what has not been given. “Two maxims,” he says, “we must ever bear in mind—that apart from the will there is nothing either good or bad, and that we must not try to anticipate or direct events, but merely accept them with intelligence.” We must, in short, resign ourselves to whatever fate and fortune bring to us, believing, as the first article of our creed, that there is a god, whose thought directs the universe, and that not merely in our acts, but even in our thoughts and plans, we cannot escape his eye. In the world the true position of man is that of member of a great system, which comprehends God and men. Each human being is in the first instance a citizen of his own nation or commonwealth; but he is also a member of the great city of gods and men, whereof the city political is only a copy in miniature. All men are the sons of God, and kindred in nature with the divinity. For man, though a member in the system of the world, has also within him a principle which can guide and understand the movement of all the members; he can enter into the method of divine administration, and thus can learn—and it is the acme of his learning—the will of God, which is the will of nature. Man, said the Stoic, is a rational animal; and in virtue of that rationality he is neither less nor worse than the gods, for the magnitude of reason is estimated not by length nor by height but by its judgments. Each man has within him a guardian spirit, a god within him, who never sleeps; so that even in darkness and solitude we are never alone, because God is within, our guardian spirit. The body which accompanies us is not strictly speaking ours; it is a poor dead thing, which belongs to the things outside us. But by reason we are the masters of those ideas and appearances which present themselves from without; we can combine them, and systematize, and can set up in ourselves an order of ideas corresponding with the order of nature.

The natural instinct of animated life, to which man also is originally subject, is self-preservation and self-interest. But men are so ordered and constituted that the individual cannot secure his own interests unless he contribute to the common welfare. We are bound up by the law of nature with the whole fabric of the world. The aim of the philosopher therefore is to reach the position of a mind which embraces the whole world in its view,—to grow into the mind of God and to make the will of nature our own. Such a sage agrees in his thought with God; he no longer blames either God or man; he fails of nothing which he purposes and falls in with no misfortune unprepared; he indulges in neither anger nor envy nor jealousy; he is leaving manhood for godhead, and in his dead body his thoughts are concerned about his fellowship with God.

The historical models to which Epictetus reverts are Diogenes and Socrates. But he frequently describes an ideal character of a missionary sage, the perfect Stoic—or, as he calls him, the Cynic. This missionary has neither country nor home nor land nor slave; his bed is the ground; he is without wife or child; his only mansion is the earth and sky and a shabby cloak. He must suffer stripes, and must love those who beat him as if he were a father or a brother. He must be perfectly unembarrassed in the service of God, not bound by the common ties of life, nor entangled by relationships, which if he transgresses he will lose the character of a man of honour, while if he upholds them he will cease to be the messenger, watchman and herald of the gods. The perfect man thus described will not be angry with the wrong-doer; he will only pity his erring brother; for anger in such a case would only betray that he too thought the wrong-doer gained a substantial blessing by his wrongful act, instead of being, as he is, utterly ruined.

The best editions of the works of Epictetus are by J. Schweighäuser (6 vols., Leipzig, 1799-1800) and H. Schenkl (Leipzig, 1894, 1898). English translations by Elizabeth Carter (London, 1758); G. Long (London, 1848, ed. 1877, 1892, 1897); T.W. Higginson (Boston, 1865, new ed. 1890); of the Encheiridion alone by H. Talbot (London, 1881); T.W.H. Rolleston (London, 1881). See A. Bonhöffer, Epiktet und die Stoa (Stuttgart, 1890) and Die Ethik des Stoikers Epiktet (1894): E.M. Schranka, Der Stoiker Epiktet und seine Philosophie (Frankfort, 1885); T. Zahn, Der Stoiker Epiktet und sein Verhältnis zum Christentum (2nd ed. Erlangen, 1895). See also Stoics and works quoted.

(W. W.; X.)

EPICURUS (342-270 B.C.), Greek philosopher, was born in Samos in the end of 342 or the beginning of 341 B.C., seven years after the death of Plato. His father Neocles, a native of Gargettos, a small village of Attica, had settled in Samos, not later than 352, as one of the cleruchs sent out after the victory of Timotheus in 366-365. At the age of eighteen he went to Athens, where the Platonic school was flourishing under the lead of Xenocrates. A year later, however, Antipater banished some 12,000 of the poorer citizens, and Epicurus joined his father, who was now living at Colophon. It seems possible that he had listened to the lectures of Nausiphanes, a Democritean philosopher, and Pamphilus the Platonist, but he was probably, like his father, merely an ordinary teacher. Stimulated, however, by the perusal of some writings of Democritus, he began to formulate a doctrine of his own; and at Mitylene, Colophon and Lampsacus, he gradually gathered round him several enthusiastic disciples. In 307 he returned to Athens, which had just been restored to a nominal independence by Demetrius Poliorcetes, and there he lived for the rest of his life. The scene of his teaching was a garden which he bought for about £300 (80 minae). There he passed his days as the loved and venerated head of a remarkable, and up to that time unique, society of men and women. Amongst the number were Metrodorus (d. 277), his brother Timocrates, and his wife Leontion (formerly a hetaera), Polyaenus, Hermarchus, who succeeded Epicurus as chief of the school, Leonteus and his wife Themista, and Idomeneus, whose wife was a sister of Metrodorus. It is possible that the relations between the sexes—in this prototype of Rabelais’s Abbey of Thélème—were not entirely what is termed Platonic. But there is on the other hand scarcely a doubt that the tales of licentiousness circulated by opponents are groundless. The stories of the Stoics, who sought to refute the views of Epicurus by an appeal to his alleged antecedents and habits, were no doubt in the main, as Diogenes Laertius says, the stories of maniacs. The general charges, which they endeavoured to substantiate by forged letters, need not count for much, and in many cases they only exaggerated what, if true, was not so heinous as they suggested. Against them trustworthy authorities testified to his general and remarkable considerateness, pointing to the statues which the city had raised in his honour, and to the numbers of his friends, who were many enough to fill whole cities.

The mode of life in his community was plain. The general drink was water and the food barley bread; half a pint of wine was held an ample allowance. “Send me,” says Epicurus to a correspondent, “send me some Cythnian cheese, so that, should I choose, I may fare sumptuously.” There was no community of property, which, as Epicurus said, would imply distrust of their own and others’ good resolutions. The company was held in unity by the charms of his personality, and by the free intercourse which he inculcated and exemplified. Though he seems to have had a warm affection for his countrymen, it was as human beings brought into contact with him, and not as members of a political body, that he preferred to regard them. He never entered public life. His kindliness extended even to his slaves, one of whom, named Mouse, was a brother in philosophy.

Epicurus died of stone in 270 B.C. He left his property, consisting of the garden (Κῆποι Ἐπικούρου), a house in Melite (the south-west quarter of Athens), and apparently some funds besides, to two trustees on behalf of his society, and for the special interest of some youthful members. The garden was set apart for the use of the school; the house became the house of Hermarchus and his fellow-philosophers during his lifetime. The surplus proceeds of the property were further to be applied to maintain a yearly offering in commemoration of his departed father, mother and brothers, to pay the expenses incurred in celebrating his own birthday every year on the 7th of the month Gamelion, and for a social gathering of the sect on the 20th of every month in honour of himself and Metrodorus. Besides similar tributes in honour of his brothers and Polyaenus, he directed the trustees to be guardians of the son of Polyaenus and the son of Metrodorus; whilst the daughter of the last mentioned was to be married by the guardians to some member of the society who should be approved of by Hermarchus. His four slaves, three men and one woman, were left their freedom. His books passed to Hermarchus.

Philosophy.—The Epicurean philosophy is traditionally divided into the three branches of logic, physics and ethics. It is, however, only as a basis of facts and principles for his theory of life that logical and physical inquiries find a place at all. Epicurus himself had not apparently shared in any large or liberal culture, and his influence was certainly thrown on the side of those who depreciated purely scientific pursuits as one-sided and misleading. “Steer clear of all culture” was his advice to a young disciple. In this aversion to a purely or mainly intellectual training may be traced a recoil from the systematic metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle, whose tendency was to subordinate the practical man to the philosopher. Ethics had been based upon logic and metaphysics. But experience showed that systematic knowledge of truth is not synonymous with right action. Hence, in the second place, Plato and Aristotle had assumed a perfect state with laws to guide the individual aright. It was thus comparatively easy to show how the individual could learn to apprehend and embody the moral law in his own conduct. But experience had in the time of Epicurus shown the temporary and artificial character of the civic form of social life. It was necessary, therefore, for Epicurus to go back to nature to find a more enduring and a wider foundation for ethical doctrine, to go back from words to realities, to give up reasonings and get at feelings, to test conceptions and arguments by a final reference to the only touchstone of truth—to sensation. There, and there only, one seems to find a common and a satisfactory ground, supposing always that all men’s feelings give the same answer. Logic must go, but so also must the state, as a specially-privileged and eternal order of things, as anything more than a contrivance serving certain purposes of general utility.

To the Epicureans the elaborate logic of the Stoics was a superfluity. In place of logic we find canonic, the theory of the three tests of truth and reality. (1) The only ultimate canon of reality is sensation; whatever we feel, whatever we perceive by any sense, that we know on the most certain evidence we can have to be real, and in proportion as our feeling is clear, distinct and vivid, in that proportion are we sure of the reality of its object. But in what that vividness (ἐνάργεια) consists is a question which Epicurus does not raise, and which he would no doubt have deemed superfluous quibbling over a matter sufficiently settled by common sense. (2) Besides our sensations, we learn truth and reality by our preconceptions or ideas (προλήψεις). These are the fainter images produced by repeated sensations, the “ideas” resulting from previous “impressions”—sensations at second-hand as it were, which are stored up in memory, and which a general name serves to recall. These bear witness to reality, not because we feel anything now, but because we felt it once; they are sensations registered in language, and again, if need be, translatable into immediate sensations or groups of sensation. (3) Lastly, reality is vouched for by the imaginative apprehensions of the mind (φανταστικαὶ ἐπιβολαί), immediate feelings of which the mind is conscious as produced by some action of its own. This last canon, however, was of dubious validity. Epicureanism generally was content to affirm that whatever we effectively feel in consciousness is real; in which sense they allow reality to the fancies of the insane, the dreams of a sleeper, and those feelings by which we imagine the existence of beings of perfect blessedness and endless life. Similarly, just because fear, hope and remembrance add to the intensity of consciousness, the Epicurean can hold that bodily pain and pleasure is a less durable and important thing than pain and pleasure of mind. Whatever we feel to affect us does affect us, and is therefore real. Error can arise only because we mix up our opinions and suppositions with what we actually feel. The Epicurean canon is a rejection of logic; it sticks fast to the one point that “sensation is sensation,” and there is no more to be made of it. Sensation, it says, is unreasoning (ἄλογος); it must be accepted, and not criticized. Reasoning can come in only to put sensations together, and to point out how they severally contribute to human welfare; it does not make them, and cannot alter them.

Physics.—In the Epicurean physics there are two parts—a general metaphysic and psychology, and a special explanation of particular phenomena of nature. The method of Epicurus is the argument of analogy. It is an attempt to make the phenomena of nature intelligible to us by regarding them as instances on a grand scale of that with which we are already familiar on a small scale. This is what Epicurus calls explaining what we do not see by what we do see.

In physics Epicurus founded upon Democritus, and his chief object was to abolish the dualism between mind and matter which is so essential a point in the systems of Plato and Aristotle. All that exists, says Epicurus, is corporeal (τὸ πᾶν ἐστι σῶμα); the intangible is non-existent, or empty space. If a thing exists it must be felt, and to be felt it must exert resistance. But not all things are intangible which our senses are not subtle enough to detect. We must indeed accept our feelings; but we must also believe much which is not directly testified by sensation, if only it serves to explain phenomena and does not contravene our sensations. The fundamental postulates of Epicureanism are atoms and the void (ἄτομα καὶ κενόν). Space is infinite, and there is an illimitable multitude of indestructible, indivisible and absolutely compact atoms in perpetual motion in this illimitable space. These atoms, differing only in size, figure and weight, are perpetually moving with equal velocities, but at a rate far surpassing our conceptions; as they move, they are for ever giving rise to new worlds; and these worlds are perpetually tending towards dissolution, and towards a fresh series of creations. This universe of ours is only one section out of the innumerable worlds in infinite space; other worlds may present systems very different from that of our own. The soul of man is only a finer species of body, spread throughout the whole aggregation which we term his bodily frame. Like a warm breath, it pervades the human structure and works with it; nor could it act as it does in perception unless it were corporeal. The various processes of sense, notably vision, are explained on the principles of materialism. From the surfaces of all objects there are continually flowing thin filmy images exactly copying the solid body whence they originate; and these images by direct impact on the organism produce (we need not care to ask how) the phenomena of vision. Epicurus in this way explains vision by substituting for the apparent action of a body at a distance a direct contact of image and organ. But without following the explanation into the details in which it revels, it may be enough to say that the whole hypothesis is but an attempt to exclude the occult conception of action at a distance, and substitute a familiar phenomenon.

The Gods.—This aspect of the Epicurean physics becomes clearer when we look at his mode of rendering particular phenomena intelligible. His purpose is to eliminate the common idea of divine interference. That there are gods Epicurus never dreams of denying. But these gods have not on their shoulders the burden of upholding and governing the world. They are themselves the products of the order of nature—a higher species than humanity, but not the rulers of man, neither the makers nor the upholders of the world. Man should worship them, but his worship is the reverence due to the ideals of perfect blessedness; it ought not to be inspired either by hope or by fear. To prevent all reference of the more potent phenomena of nature to divine action Epicurus rationalizes the processes of the cosmos. He imagines all possible plans or hypotheses, not actually contradicted by our experience of familiar events, which will represent in an intelligible way the processes of astronomy and meteorology. When two or more modes of accounting for a phenomena are equally admissible as not directly contradicted by known phenomena, it seems to Epicurus almost a return to the old mythological habit of mind when a savant asserts that the real cause is one and only one. “Thunder,” he says, “may be explained in many other ways; only let us have no myths of divine action. To assign only a single cause for these phenomena, when the facts familiar to us suggest several, is insane, and is just the absurd conduct to be expected from people who dabble in the vanities of astronomy.” We need not be too curious to inquire how these celestial phenomena actually do come about; we can learn how they might have been produced, and to go further is to trench on ground beyond the limits of human knowledge.

Thus, if Epicurus objects to the doctrine of mythology, he objects no less to the doctrine of an inevitable fate, a necessary order of things unchangeable and supreme over the human will. The Stoic doctrine of Fatalism seemed to Epicurus no less deadly a foe of man’s true welfare than popular superstition. Even in the movement of the atoms he introduces a sudden change of direction, which is supposed to render their aggregation easier, and to break the even law of destiny. So, in the sphere of human action, Epicurus would allow of no absolutely controlling necessity. In fact, it is only when we assume for man this independence of the gods and of fatality that the Epicurean theory of life becomes possible. It assumes that man can, like the gods, withdraw himself out of reach of all external influences, and thus, as a sage, “live like a god among men, seeing that the man is in no wise like a mortal creature who lives in undying blessedness.” And this present life is the only one. With one consent Epicureanism preaches that the death of the body is the end of everything for man, and hence the other world has lost all its terrors as well as all its hopes.

The attitude of Epicurus in this whole matter is antagonistic to science. The idea of a systematic enchainment of phenomena, in which each is conditioned by every other, and none can be taken in isolation and explained apart from the rest, was foreign to his mind. So little was the scientific conception of the solar system familiar to Epicurus that he could reproach the astronomers, because their account of an eclipse represented things otherwise than as they appear to the senses, and could declare that the sun and stars were just as large as they seemed to us.

Ethics.—The moral philosophy of Epicurus is a qualified hedonism, the heir of the Cyrenaic doctrine that pleasure is the good thing in life. Neither sect, it may be added, advocated sensuality pure and unfeigned—the Epicurean least of all. By pleasure Epicurus meant both more and less than the Cyrenaics. To the Cyrenaics pleasure was of moments; to Epicurus it extended as a habit of mind through life. To the Cyrenaics pleasure was something active and positive; to Epicurus it was rather negative—tranquillity more than vigorous enjoyment. The test of true pleasure, according to Epicurus, is the removal and absorption of all that gives pain; it implies freedom from pain of body and from trouble of mind. The happiness of the Epicurean was, it might almost seem, a grave and solemn pleasure—a quiet unobtrusive ease of heart, but not exuberance and excitement. The sage of Epicureanism is a rational and reflective seeker for happiness, who balances the claims of each pleasure against the evils that may possibly ensue, and treads the path of enjoyment cautiously. Prudence is, therefore, the only real guide to happiness; it is thus the chief excellence, and the foundation of all the virtues. It is, in fact, says Epicurus—in language which contrasts strongly with that of Aristotle on the same topic—“a more precious power than philosophy.” The reason or intellect is introduced to balance possible pleasures and pains, and to construct a scheme in which pleasures are the materials of a happy life. Feeling, which Epicurus declared to be the means of determining what is good, is subordinated to a reason which adjudicates between competing pleasures with the view of securing tranquillity of mind and body. “We cannot live pleasantly without living wisely and nobly and righteously.” Virtue is at least a means of happiness, though apart from that it is no good in itself, any more than mere sensual enjoyments, which are good only because they may sometimes serve to secure health of body and tranquillity of mind. (See further Ethics.)

The Epicurean School.—Even in the lifetime of Epicurus we hear of the vast numbers of his friends, not merely in Greece, but in Asia and Egypt. The crowds of Epicureans were a standing enigma to the adherents of less popular sects. Cicero pondered over the fact; Arcesilaus explained the secession to the Epicurean camp, compared with the fact that no Epicurean was ever known to have abandoned his school, by saying that, though it was possible for a man to be turned into a eunuch, no eunuch could ever become a man. But the phenomenon was not obscure. The doctrine has many truths, and is attractive to many in virtue of its simplicity and its immediate relation to life. The dogmas of Epicurus became to his followers a creed embodying the truths on which salvation depended; and they passed on from one generation to another with scarcely a change or addition. The immediate disciples of Epicurus have been already mentioned, with the exception of Colotes of Lampsacus, a great favourite of Epicurus, who wrote a work arguing “that it was impossible even to live according to the doctrines of the other philosophers.” In the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. Apollodorus, nicknamed κηποτύραννος (“Lord of the Garden”), and Zeno of Sidon (who describes Socrates as “the Attic buffoon”: Cic. De nat. deor. i, 21, 33, 34) taught at Athens. About 150 B.C. Epicureanism established itself at Rome. Beginning with C. Amafinius or Amafanius (Cic. Acad. i. 2, Tusc. iv. 3), we find the names of Phaedrus (who became scholarch at Athens c. 70 B.C.) and Philodemus (originally of Gadara in Palestine) as distinguished Epicureans in the time of Cicero. But the greatest of its Roman names was Lucretius, whose De rerum natura embodies the main teaching of Epicurus with great exactness, and with a beauty which the subject seemed scarcely to allow. Lucretius is a proof, if any were needed, that Epicureanism is compatible with nobility of soul. In the 1st century of the Christian era, the nature of the time, with its active political struggles, naturally called Stoicism more into the foreground, yet Seneca, though nominally a Stoic, draws nearly all his suavity and much of his paternal wisdom from the writings of Epicurus. The position of Epicureanism as a recognized school in the 2nd century is best seen in the fact that it was one of the four schools (the others were the Stoic, Platonist, and Peripatetic) which were placed on a footing of equal endowment when Marcus Aurelius founded chairs of philosophy at Athens. The evidence of Diogenes proves that it still subsisted as a school a century later, but its spirit lasted longer than its formal organization as a school. A great deal of the best of the Renaissance was founded on Epicureanism, and in more recent times a great number of prominent thinkers have been Epicureans in a greater or less degree. Among these may be mentioned Pierre Gassendi, who revived and codified the doctrine in the 17th century; Molière, the comte de Gramont, Rousseau, Fontenelle and Voltaire. All those whose ethical theory is in any degree hedonistic are to some extent the intellectual descendants of Epicurus (see Hedonism).

Works.—Epicurus was a voluminous writer (πολυγραφώτατος, Diog. Laërt. x. 26)—the author, it is said, of about 300 works. He had a style and vocabulary of his own. His chief aim in writing was plainness and intelligibility, but his want of order and logical precision thwarted his purpose. He pretended to have read little, and to be the original architect of his own system, and the claim was no doubt on the whole true. But he had read Democritus, and, it is said, Anaxagoras and Archelaus. His works, we learn, were full of repetition, and critics speak of vulgarities of language and faults of style. None the less his writings were committed to memory and remained the text-books of Epicureanism to the last. His chief work was a treatise on nature (Περὶ φύσεως), in thirty-seven books, of which fragments from about nine books have been found in the rolls discovered at Herculaneum, along with considerable treatises by several of his followers, and most notably Philodemus. An epitome of his doctrine is contained in three letters preserved by Diogenes.

Authorities.—The chief ancient accounts of Epicurus are in the tenth book of Diogenes Laërtius, in Lucretius, and in several treatises of Cicero and Plutarch. Gassendi, in his De vita, moribus, et doctrina Epicuri (Lyons, 1647), and his Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri, systematized the doctrine. The Volumina Herculanensia (1st and 2nd series) contain fragments of treatises by Epicurus and members of his school. See also H. Usener, Epicurea (Leipzig, 1887) and Epicuri recogniti specimen (Bonn, 1880); Epicuri physica et meteorologica (ed. J.G. Schneider, Leipzig, 1813); Th. Gomperz in his Herkulanische Studien, and in contributions to the Vienna Academy (Monatsberichte), has tried to evolve from the fragments more approximation to modern empiricism than they seem to contain. For criticism see W. Wallace, Epicureanism (London, 1880), and Epicurus; A Lecture (London, 1896); G. Trezza, Epicuro e l’Epicureismo (Florence, 1877; ed. Milan, 1885); E. Zeller, Philosophy of the Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics (Eng. trans. O.J. Reichel, 1870; ed. 1880); Sir James Mackintosh, On the Progress of Ethical Philosophy (4th ed.); J. Watson, Hedonistic Theories (Glasgow, 1895); J. Kreibig, Epicurus (Vienna, 1886); A. Goedeckemeyer, Epikurs Verhältnis zu Demokrit in der Naturphil. (Strassburg, 1897); Paul von Gizycki, Über das Leben und die Moralphilos. des Epikur (Halle, 1879), and Einleitende Bemerkungen zu einer Untersuchung über den Werth der Naturphilos. des Epikur (Berlin, 1884); P. Cassel, Epikur der Philosoph (Berlin, 1892); M. Guyau, La Morale d’Épicure et ses rapports avec les doctrines contemporaines (Paris, 1878; revised and enlarged, 1881); F. Picavet, De Epicuro novae religionis sectatore (Paris, 1889); H. Sidgwick, History of Ethics (5th ed., 1902).

(W. W.; X.)

EPICYCLE (Gr. ἐπί, upon, and κύκλος, circle), in ancient astronomy, a small circle the centre of which describes a larger one. It was especially used to represent geometrically the periodic apparent retrograde motion of the outer planets, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, which we now know to be due to the annual revolution of the earth around the sun, but which in the Ptolemaic astronomy were taken to be real.

EPICYCLOID, the curve traced out by a point on the circumference of a circle rolling externally on another circle. If the moving circle rolls internally on the fixed circle, a point on the circumference describes a “hypocycloid” (from ὑπό, under). The locus of any other carried point is an “epitrochoid” when the circle rolls externally, and a “hypotrochoid” when the circle rolls internally. The epicycloid was so named by Ole Römer in 1674, who also demonstrated that cog-wheels having epicycloidal teeth revolved with minimum friction (see Mechanics: Applied); this was also proved by Girard Desargues, Philippe de la Hire and Charles Stephen Louis Camus. Epicycloids also received attention at the hands of Edmund Halley, Sir Isaac Newton and others; spherical epicycloids, in which the moving circle is inclined at a constant angle to the plane of the fixed circle, were studied by the Bernoullis, Pierre Louis M. de Maupertuis, François Nicole, Alexis Claude Clairault and others.

In the annexed figure, there are shown various examples of the curves named above, when the radii of the rolling and fixed circles are in the ratio of 1 to 3. Since the circumference of a circle is proportional to its radius, it follows that if the ratio of the radii be commensurable, the curve will consist of a finite number of cusps, and ultimately return into itself. In the particular case when the radii are in the ratio of 1 to 3 the epicycloid (curve a) will consist of three cusps external to the circle and placed at equal distances along its circumference. Similarly, the corresponding epitrochoids will exhibit three loops or nodes (curve b), or assume the form shown in the curve c. It is interesting to compare the forms of these curves with the three forms of the cycloid (q.v.). The hypocycloid derived from the same circles is shown as curve d, and is seen to consist of three cusps arranged internally to the fixed circle; the corresponding hypotrochoid consists of a three-foil and is shown in curve e. The epicycloid shown is termed the “three-cusped epicycloid” or the “epicycloid of Cremona.”

The cartesian equation to the epicycloid assumes the form

x = (a + b) cosθ − b cos(a + b/b)θ, y = (a + b) sinθ − b sin(a + b/b)θ,

when the centre of the fixed circle is the origin, and the axis of x passes through the initial point of the curve (i.e. the original position of the moving point on the fixed circle), a and b being the radii of the fixed and rolling circles, and θ the angle through which the line joining the centres of the two circles has passed. It may be shown that if the distance of the carried point from the centre of the rolling circle be mb, the equation to the epitrochoid is

x = (a + b) cosθ − mb cos(a + b/b)θ, y = (a + b) sinθ − mb sin(a + b/b)θ,

The equations to the hypocycloid and its corresponding trochoidal curves are derived from the two preceding equations by changing the sign of b. Leonhard Euler (Acta Petrop. 1784) showed that the same hypocycloid can be generated by circles having radii of ½(a ± b) rolling on a circle of radius a; and also that the hypocycloid formed when the radius of the rolling circle is greater than that of the fixed circle is the same as the epicycloid formed by the rolling of a circle whose radius is the difference of the original radii. These propositions may be derived from the formulae given above, or proved directly by purely geometrical methods.

The tangential polar equation to the epicycloid, as given above, is p = (a + 2b) sin(a/a + 2b)ψ, while the intrinsic equation is s = 4(b/a)(a + b) cos(a/a + 2b)ψ and the pedal equation is r² = a² + (4b·a + b)p²/(a + 2b)². Therefore any epicycloid or hypocycloid may be represented by the equations p = A sin Bψ or p = A cos Bψ, s = A sin Bψ or s = A cos Bψ, or r² = A + Bp², the constants A and B being readily determined by the above considerations.

If the radius of the rolling circle be one-half of the fixed circle, the hypocycloid becomes a diameter of this circle; this may be confirmed from the equation to the hypocycloid. If the ratio of the radii be as 1 to 4, we obtain the four-cusped hypocycloid, which has the simple cartesian equation x2/3 + y2/3 = a2/3. This curve is the envelope of a line of constant length, which moves so that its extremities are always on two fixed lines at right angles to each other, i.e. of the line x/α + y/β = 1, with the condition α² + β² = 1/a, a constant. The epicycloid when the radii of the circles are equal is the cardioid (q.v.), and the corresponding trochoidal curves are limaçons (q.v.). Epicycloids are also examples of certain caustics (q.v.).

For the methods of determining the formulae and results stated above see J. Edwards, Differential Calculus, and for geometrical constructions see T.H. Eagles, Plane Curves.

EPIDAURUS, the name of two ancient cities of southern Greece.

1. A maritime city situated on the eastern coast of Argolis, sometimes distinguished as ἡ ἱερὰ Ἐπίδαυρος, or Epidaurus the Holy. It stood on a small rocky peninsula with a natural harbour on the northern side and an open but serviceable bay on the southern; and from this position acquired the epithet of δίστομος, or the two-mouthed. Its narrow but fertile territory consisted of a plain shut in on all sides except towards the sea by considerable elevations, among which the most remarkable were Mount Arachnaeon and Titthion. The conterminous states were Corinth, Argos, Troezen and Hermione. Its proximity to Athens and the islands of the Saronic gulf, the commercial advantages of its position, and the fame of its temple of Asclepius combined to make Epidaurus a place of no small importance. Its origin was ascribed to a Carian colony, whose memory was possibly preserved in Epicarus, the earlier name of the city; it was afterwards occupied by Ionians, and appears to have incorporated a body of Phlegyans from Thessaly. The Ionians in turn succumbed to the Dorians of Argos, who, according to the legend, were led by Deiphontes; and from that time the city continued to preserve its Dorian character. It not only colonized the neighbouring islands, and founded the city of Aegina, by which it was ultimately outstripped in wealth and power, but also took part with the people of Argos and Troezen in their settlements in the south of Asia Minor. The monarchical government introduced by Deiphontes gave way to an oligarchy, and the oligarchy degenerated into a despotism. When Procles the tyrant was carried captive by Periander of Corinth, the oligarchy was restored, and the people of Epidaurus continued ever afterwards close allies of the Spartan power. The governing body consisted of 180 members, chosen from certain influential families, and the executive was entrusted to a select committee of artynae (from ἀρτύνειν, to manage). The rural population, who had no share in the affairs of the city, were called κονίποδες (“dusty-feet”). Among the objects of interest described by Pausanias as extant in Epidaurus are the image of Athena Cissaea in the Acropolis, the temple of Dionysus and Artemis, a shrine of Aphrodite, statues of Asclepius and his wife Epione, and a temple of Hera. The site of the last is identified with the chapel of St Nicolas; a few portions of the outer walls of the city can be traced; and the name Epidaurus is still preserved by the little village of Nea-Epidavros, or Pidhavro.

The Hieron (sacred precinct) of Asclepius, which lies inland about 8 m. from the town of Epidaurus, has been thoroughly excavated by the Greek Archaeological Society since the year 1881, under the direction of M. Kavvadias. In addition to the sacred precinct, with its temples and other buildings, the theatre and stadium have been cleared; and several other extensive buildings, including baths, gymnasia, and a hospital for invalids, have also been found. The sacred road from Epidaurus, which is flanked by tombs, approaches the precinct through a gateway or propylaea. The chief buildings are grouped together, and include temples of Asclepius and Artemis, the Tholos, and the Abaton, or portico where the patients slept. In addition to remains of architecture and sculpture, some of them of high merit, there have been found many inscriptions, throwing light on the cures attributed to the god. The chief buildings outside the sacred precinct are the theatre and the stadium.

The temple of Asclepius, which contained the gold and ivory statue by Thrasymedes of Paros, had six columns at the ends and eleven at the sides; it was raised on stages and approached by a ramp at the eastern front. An inscription has been found recording the contracts for building this temple; it dates from about 460 B.C. The sculptor Timotheus—one of those who collaborated in the Mausoleum—is mentioned as undertaking to make the acroteria that stood on the ends of the pediments, and also models for the sculpture that filled one of them. Some of this sculpture has been found; the acroteria are Nereids mounted on sea-horses, and one pediment contained a battle of Greeks and Amazons. The great altar lay to the south of the temple, and a little to the east of it are what appear to be the remains of an earlier altar, built into the corner of a large square edifice of Roman date, perhaps a house of the priests. Just to the south of this are the foundations of a small temple of Artemis. The Tholos lay to the south-west of the temple of Asclepius; it must, when perfect, have been one of the most beautiful buildings in Greece; the exquisite carving of its mouldings is only equalled by that of the Erechtheum at Athens. It consisted of a circular chamber, surrounded on the outside by a Doric colonnade, and on the inside by a Corinthian one. The architect was Polyclitus, probably to be identified with the younger sculptor of that name. In the inscription recording the contracts for its building it is called the Thymele; and this name may give the clue to its purpose; it was probably the idealized architectural representative of a primitive pit of sacrifice, such as may still be seen in the Asclepianum at Athens. The foundations now visible present a very curious appearance, consisting of a series of concentric walls. Those in the middle are thin, having only the pavement of the cella to support, and are provided with doors and partitions that make a sort of subterranean labyrinth. There is no evidence for the statement sometimes made that there was a well or spring below the Tholos. North of the Tholos is the long portico described in inscriptions as the Abaton; it is on two different levels, and the lower or western portion of it had two storeys, of which the upper one was on a level with the ground in the eastern portion. Here the invalids used to sleep when consulting the god, and the inscriptions found here record not only the method of consulting the god, but the manner of his cures. Some of the inscriptions are contemporary dedications; but those which give us most information are long lists of cases, evidently compiled by the priests from the dedications in the sanctuary, or from tradition. There is no reason to doubt that most of the records have at least a basis of fact, for the cases are in accord with well-attested phenomena of a similar nature at the present day; but there are others, such as the miraculous mending of a broken vase, which suggest either invention or trickery.