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Rh Fehérvár proclaimed it, Eötvös cited him to appear at the capital ad audiendum verbum regium. He was a constant defender of the composition with Austria (Ausgleich), and during the absence of Andrássy used to preside over the council of ministers; but the labours of the last few years were too much for his failing health, and he died at Pest on the 2nd of February 1871. On the 3rd of May 1879 a statue was erected to him at Pest in the square which bears his name.

Eötvös occupied as prominent a place in Hungarian literature as in Hungarian politics. His peculiarity, both as a politician and as a statesman, lies in the fact that he was a true philosopher, a philosopher at heart as well as in theory; and in his poems and novels he clothed in artistic forms all the great ideas for which he contended in social and political life. The best of his verses are to be found in his ballads, but his poems are insignificant compared with his romances. It was The Carthusians, written on the occasion of the floods at Pest in 1838, that first took the public by storm. The Magyar novel was then in its infancy, being chiefly represented by the historico-epics of Jósiká. Eötvös first modernized it, giving prominence in his pages to current social problems and political aspirations. The famous Village Notary came still nearer to actual life, while Hungary in 1514, in which the terrible Dozsa Jacquerie (see ) is so vividly described, is especially interesting because it rightly attributes the great national catastrophe of Mohács to the blind selfishness of the Magyar nobility and the intense sufferings of the people. Yet, as already stated, all these books are written with a moral purpose, and their somewhat involved and difficult style is, nowadays at any rate, a trial to those who are acquainted with the easy, brilliant and lively novels of Jókai.

The best edition of Eötvös’ collected works is that of 1891, in 17 vols. Comparatively few of his writings have been translated, but there are a good English version (London, 1850) and numerous German versions of The Village Notary, while The Emancipation of the Jews has been translated into Italian and German (Pest, 1841–1842), and a German translation of Hungary in 1514, under the title of Der Bauernkrieg in Ungarn was published at Pest in 1850.

See A. Bán, Life and Art of Baron Joseph Eötvös (Hung.) (Budapest, 1902); Zoltan Ferenczi Baron Joseph Eötvös (Hung.) (Budapest, 1903) [this is the best biography]; and M. Berkovics, Baron Joseph Eotvos and the French Literature (Hung.) (Budapest, 1904).

EPAMINONDAS (c. 418–362), Theban general and statesman, born about 418 of a noble but impoverished family. For his education he was chiefly indebted to Lysis of Tarentum, a Pythagorean exile who had found refuge with his father Polymnis. He first comes into notice in the attack upon Mantineia in 385, when he fought on the Spartan side and saved the life of his future colleague Pelopidas. In his youth Epaminondas took little part in public affairs; he held aloof from the political assassinations which preceded the Theban insurrection of 379. But in the following campaigns against Sparta he rendered good service in organizing the Theban defence. In 371 he represented Thebes at the congress in Sparta, and by his refusal to surrender the Boeotian cities under Theban control prevented the conclusion of a general peace. In the ensuing campaign he commanded the Boeotian army which met the Peloponnesian levy at Leuctra, and by a brilliant victory on this site, due mainly to his daring innovations in the tactics of the heavy infantry, established at once the predominance of Thebes among the land-powers of Greece and his own fame as the greatest and most original of Greek generals. At the instigation of the Peloponnesian states which armed against Sparta in consequence of this battle, Epaminondas in 370 led a large host into Laconia; though unable to capture Sparta he ravaged its territory and dealt a lasting blow at Sparta’s predominance in Peloponnesus by liberating the Messenians and rebuilding their capital at Messene. Accused on his return to Thebes of having exceeded the term of his command, he made good his defence and was re-elected boeotarch. In 369 he forced the Isthmus lines and secured Sicyon for Thebes, but gained no considerable successes. In the following year he served as a common soldier in Thessaly, and upon being reinstated in command contrived the safe retreat of the Theban army from a difficult position. Returning to Thessaly next year at the head of an army he procured the liberation of Pelopidas from the tyrant Alexander of Pherae without striking a blow. In his third expedition (366) to Peloponnesus, Epaminondas again eluded the Isthmus garrison and won over the Achaeans to the Theban alliance. Turning his attention to the growing maritime power of Athens, Epaminondas next equipped a fleet of 100 triremes, and during a cruise to the Propontis detached several states from the Athenian confederacy. When subsequent complications threatened the position of Thebes in Peloponnesus he again mustered a large army in order to crush the newly formed Spartan league (362). After some masterly operations between Sparta and Mantineia, by which he nearly captured both these towns, he engaged in a decisive battle on the latter site, and by his vigorous shock tactics gained a complete victory over his opponents (see ). Epaminondas himself received a severe wound during the combat, and died soon after the issue was decided.

His title to fame rests mainly on his brilliant qualities both as a strategist and as a tactician; his influence on military art in Greece was of the greatest. For the purity and uprightness of his character he likewise stood in high repute; his culture and eloquence equalled the highest Attic standard. In politics his chief achievement was the final overthrow of Sparta’s predominance in the Peloponnese; as a constructive statesman he displayed no special talent, and the lofty pan-Hellenic ambitions which are imputed to him at any rate never found a practical expression.

Cornelius Nepos, Vita Epaminondae; Diodorus xv. 52-88; Xenophon, Hellenica, vii.; L. Pomtow, Das Leben des Epaminondas (Berlin, 1870); von Stein, Geschichte der spartanischen und thebanischen Hegemonie (Dorpat, 1884), pp. 123 sqq.; H. Swoboda in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, v. pt. 2 (Stuttgart, 1905), pp. 2674-2707; also : History, § 6.

EPARCH, an official, a governor of a province of Roman Greece,, whose title was equivalent to, or represented that of the Roman praefectus. The area of his administration was called an eparchy. The term survives as one of the administrative units of modern Greece, the country being divided into nomarchies, subdivided into eparchies, again subdivided into demarchies (see : Local Administration). “Eparch” and “eparchy” are also used in the Russian Orthodox Church for a bishop and his diocese respectively.

EPAULETTE (a French word, from épaule, a shoulder), properly a shoulder-piece, and so applied to the shoulder-knot of ribbon to which a scapulary was attached, worn by members of a religious order. The military usage was probably derived from the metal plate (épaulière) which protected the shoulder in the defensive armour of the 16th century. It was first used merely as a shoulder knot to fasten the baldric, and the application of it to mark distinctive grades of rank was begun in France at the suggestion, it is said, of Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet, duc de Belle-Isle, in 1759. In modern times it always appears as a shoulder ornament for military and naval uniforms. At first it consisted merely of a fringe hanging from the end of the shoulder-strap or cord over the sleeve, but towards the end of the 18th century it became a solid ornament, consisting of a flat shoulder-piece, extended beyond the point of the shoulder into an oval plate, from the edge of which hangs a thick fringe, in the case of officers of gold or silver. The epaulette is worn in the British navy by officers above the rank of sub-lieutenant; in the army it ceased to be worn about 1855. It is worn by officers in the United States navy above the rank of ensign; since 1872 it is only worn by general officers in the army. In most other countries epaulettes are worn by officers, and in the French army by the men also, with a fringe of worsted, various distinctions of shape and colour being observed between ranks, corps and arms of the service. The “scale” is similar to the epaulette, but has no fringe.

ÉPÉE, CHARLES-MICHEL, (1712–1789), celebrated for his labours in behalf of the deaf and dumb, was born at Paris on the 25th of November 1712, being the son of the king’s architect. He studied for the church, but having declined to sign a religious formula opposed to the doctrines of the Jansenists, he was denied ordination by the bishop of his diocese. He then