Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/111

Rh EUPHEMUS. tected him from the indignation of the people of Ithaca, When Odysseus after his long wander- ings returned home, Eupeithes wanted to avenge the death of his son Antinous, who had been one of Penelope's suitors and was slain by Odysseus. He accordingly led a band of Ithacans against Odysseus, but fell in the struggle. (Hom. Od. xvi. 43(i, xxiv. 469, 523.) [L. S.] EUPHANTUS {^v<pavTos of Olynthus, a Pythagorean philosopher and tragic poet, who lived a little later than the period of the tragic Pleiad. He was the disciple of Eubulides of Miletus, and the instructor of Antigonus I. king of Macedonia. He wrote many tragedies, which were well received at the games. He also wrote a very highly esteem- ed work, irepl ^aaiAeias, addressed to Antigonus, and a history of his own times : he lived to a great Age. (Diog. Laert. ii. 110, 141.) The Euphantus whose history is quoted by Athenaeus (vi. p. 251, d.) must have been a different person, since he mentioned Ptolemy III. of Egypt. (Vossius, de Hist. Graec. p. 69, ed. Westermann ; Welcker, die Griech. Tragoed. p. 1268.) [P. S.] EUPHE'ME (Eu(/)7f/i7j), the nurse of the Muses, of whom there was a statue in the grove of the Muses near Helicon. (Pans. ix. 29. § 3.) [L. S.] EUPHE'MUS(Eu^r7Mos), a son of Poseidon by Europe, the daughter of Tityus, or by Mecionice or Oris, a daughter of Orion or Eurotas. (Schol. ad Find. Pytk iv. 15 ; Tzetz. Chil. ii. 43.) Accord- ing to the one account he was an inhabitant of Panopeus on the Cephissus in Phocis, and accord- ing to the other of Hyria in Boeotia, and after- wards lived at Taenaras. By a Lemnian woman, Malicha, Malache, or Lamache, he became the father of Leucophanes (Schol. ad Find. Pyth. iv. 455 ; Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 886) ; but he was married to Laonome, the sister of Heracles. Euphemus was one of the Calydonian hunters, and the helms- man of the vessel of the Argonauts, and, by a power which his father had granted to him, he could walk on the sea just as on firm ground. (ApoUon. Rhod. i. 182.) He is mentioned also as the ancestor of Battus, the founder of Cyrene, and the following story at once connects him with that colony. When the Argonauts carried their ship through Libya to the coast of the Mediter- ranean, Triton, who would not let them pass with- out shewing them some act of friendship, offered them a clod of Libyan earth. None of the Argo- nauts would accept it ; but Euphemus did, and with the clod of earth he received for his descendants the right to rule over Libya. Euphemus was to throw the piece of earth into one of the chasms of Taenaron in Peloponnesus, and his descendants, in the fourth generation, were to go to Libya and • take it into cultivation. When, however, the Ar- gonauts passed the island of Calliste, or Thera, that clod of earth by accident fell into the sea, and was carried by the waves to the coast of the island. The colonization of Libya was now to proceed from Thera, and although still by the descendants of Euphemus^ yet not till the seventeenth generation after the Argonauts. The seventeenth descendant of Euphemus was Battus of Thera. (Pind. Pyth. iv. 1, &c. ; ApoUon. Rhod. ii. 662 ; Hygin. Fab. 14, 173; Herod, iv. 150.) According to Apollo- nius Rhodius (iv. 1755), the island of Thera itself had arisen from the clod of earth, which Euphemus purposely threw into the sea. Euphemus was re- presented on the chest of Cypselus as victor, with EUPHORION. 97 a chariot and two horses. (Paus. v. 17. $ 4.) There are two other mythical personages of this name. (Anton. Lib. 8 ; Hom. IL ii. 846.) [L.S.] EUPHE'MUS {Eiopgos), a son of Panthous and brother of Hyperenor, was one of the bravest among the Trojans. He was the first who wounded Patroclus, but was afterwards slain by Menelaus (Hom.//. xvi. 806, xvii. 1 — 60), who subsequently dedicated the shield of Euphorbus in the temple of Hera, near Mj^cenae. (Paus. ii. 17. $ 3.) It is a well known story, that Pythagoras asserted that he had once been the Trojan Euphorbus, that from a Trojan he had become an Ionian, and from a warrior a philosopher. (Philostr. Vit. Aj>oll. . ^ Heroic. 17 ; Diog. Laert. viii. 4 ; Ov. Met. xv. 161.) [L. S.] EUPHORBUS {U(popSos physician to Juba II., king of Mauretania, about the end of the first century b. c, and brother to Antonius Musa, the physician to Augustus. [Musa.] Pliny says (//. A^. XXV. 38), that Juba gave the name of Euphorbia to a plant which he found growing on Mount Atlas in honour of his physician, and Galen men- tions {de Compos. Medicam. sec. Locos, ix. 4. vol. xiii. p. 271) a short treatise written by the king on the virtues of the plant. Salmasius tries to prove (Prolegom. ad Homon. Hyles latr. p. 4), that this story of Pliny is without foundation, and that the word was in use much earlier than the time of Juba, as it is mentioned by Meleager. {Carm. i. 37-) It does not, however, seem likely that Pliny would have been ignorant of a plant that was known to a poet who lived two hundred years before him ; and besides, in the passage in qijestion, the commonly received reading in the pre- sent day is not 6i)(|)o'/3§r;s, but ck </)op§rjs. [W.A.G.] EUPHO'RION (Y.6<popiu}v). 1. The father of the poet Aeschylus. (Herod, ii. 156.) [Aes- chylus.] 2. The son of Aeschylus, and himself a tragic poet. [Aeschylus, vol. i. p. 42, col. 1, sub fin.} 3. Of Chalcis in Euboea, an eminent gram- marian and poet, was the son of Polymnetus, and was born, according to Suidas (s. v.), in the 126th Olympiad, when Pyrrhus was defeated by the Ro- mans, B.C. 274. He became,. but at what period of his life is not known, a citizen of Athens. (Hellad. ap. Phot. Cod. 279, p. 532, Bekker.) He was instructed in philosophy by Lacydes, who flourished about b. c. 241, and Prytanis (comp. Athen. xi. p. 447, e.), and in poetry by Archebulus of Thera. Though he was sallow, fat, and bandy- legged, he was beloved by Nicia (or Nicaea), the wife of Alexander, king of Euboea. His amours are referred to in more than one passage in the Greek Anthology. (Brunck, Anal. vol. ii. pp. 3, 43.) Having amassed great wealth, he went into Syria, to Antiochus the Great (b. c. 221), who made him his librarian. He died in Syria, and was buried at Apameia, or, according to others, at Antioch. (Suid. s. v.) The epigram (Brunck, Anal. vol. ii. p. 43), which places his tomb at the Peiraeeus, must be understood as referring to a cenotaph.