Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/490

Rh 470 E P H E P H adjacent islands. The eighth book narrated the various changes of fortune to which those nations had been subject who in succession held the supreme command in Asia, namely, the Assyrians, Lydians, and Persians. The frag ments which remain refer principally to the history of Croesus. In the ninth book he described the origin, changes, and migrations of the Amazons, Scythians, and other nations who inhabited the coasts of the Pontus and those northern countries, whence, through Thrace and Thessaly, he returned to Greece and its affairs. Then it was that Ephorus reached the period when, like every Greek historian, he imagined that the transactions of the whole world became centred in the causes and events of the Persian war; and then also he began to treat his subject with more copiousness, for we find that, while in his tenth book he had already brought down his history to the times of Miltiades, about 490 B.C., in his eighteenth book he had reached Dercyllidas, 399, and in his twenty- fifth he had arrived at the battle of Mantinea, 362. The part of the thirtieth book which gave an account of the sacred war was composed, not by Ephorus himself, but by his son Demophilus. At the conclusion of the war Ephorus took up the thread of the history, and continued it to the siege of Periuthus, 340 B.C. According to Diodorus Siculus, the whole period treated of was 750 years. For a more full description of the life of Ephorus, and a collection of the fragments of his history which have been preserved, the reader may consult Ephori Fragmenta, by Meier Marx, 1815; Creuzer, Symbolik und MytJwlogie der alien Volkcr, besondcrs dcr Griechen, 1819; Vossius, Da Historicis Gfrcccis, 1651; and Ulrici, Charakteristik der antikcn llistoriographie, 1833. EPHRAEM SYRUS, or Ephraim the Syrian, nourished in the 4th century of the Christian era, acquired great renown among his contemporaries, and has since been esteemed one of the most celebrated fathers of the church. So highly was he honoured that, according to the testimony of Jerome (Script. Uccl., c. 115), his homilies were read in many of the churches of Greece immediately after the reading of scripture. His name is almost never mentioned without the prefix Mor or Mari (master). Of the events of his life but little is known, and what has been handed down to us is much lessened in value by an admixture of apocryphal stories. The following is a translation of a short memoir of Ephraem from a Syriac source. The original is found in a 14th century MS., which is printed by Assemani in the Roman edition of Ephraem s works. &quot;The blessed Mor Ephraem was a Syrian by birth; his father was of Nisibis, his mother of the city Amida. His father was an idolatrous priest, and they lived in the time of Constantino Victor [i.e. the Great]. His father expelled him from home because he was not obedient to his wicked will; he therefore went and lived with the holy Mor Jacob, the bishop of Nisibis, and led an entire life of godliness until the time of Jovian [when Nisibis was, in 363, surrendered to the Persians]. He then left that place and came to the city Edessa, where he received the gift of the Holy Ghost, and abundantly supplied the church with the gifts and doctrine of the Spirit. After a time he went to the desert of Egypt, and from thence to Csesarea of Cappadocia to Basil, and received from him the imposition of hands for the diaconate. He im mediately returned to Edessa, and ended his life there in the year 684 (of the Greeks), on the ninth day of Haziron (June), that is, in the year 373 of the advent of our Lord.&quot; A much longer life, also extant in Syriac, gives no more historical data which can be relied on; and the so-called testament or will, which professes to contain curious auto biographical matter referring to his religious history and feelings, is of doubtful authenticity. A careful recension of the piece is given by Overbeck in his Opera Selecta. The statement of the manuscript just quoted, that Ephraem was born at Nisibis, has the authority of Sozomenus in its favour; and Ephraem himself, in his commentary on Genesis, refers to Mesopotamia as his native country. The Syrian sources are unanimous about the date of his death, and, according to Dr Bickell, the dubiety of Rodiger has arisen from a misinterpretation. At Edessa Ephraem adopted a monastic life, and is said to have dwelt in a cave near the town. The story of his visit to Egypt is probably mythical. Though the external facts of Ephraem s life are thus few and doubtful, there is no question of the manner in which he impressed his genius and spirit upon his own age, or of the great value of his literary remains. His popularity and influence among the luxurious and refined people of Edessa were very great. He wrote against Julian, and combated the heresies of Bardesanes the Gnostic philosopher, of the Arians and Sabellians, of the Manichoeans and Novatians. Whether he was acquainted with Greek or not is a matter of dispute which can hardly be decided by his writings; but Geiger has rendered it probable that he had come con siderably under Jewish influence, not a few v?ords being employed by him in an acceptation foreign to Syriac, but well-known in the Hebrew of his time and country. His works consist of commentaries, sermons, tractates, and hymns. Of many the original Syriac appears to have perished ; and they are only preserved in Greek, Latin, Armenian, or Slavonic. The greater proportion of the ser mons and tractates are composed in a metrical form, the verses being of various measures tetrasyllable, heptasyllabic, or octosyllabic, and arranged in strophes varying from fonr to twelve lines. Rhyme and assonance are both employed at irregular intervals, and, as Geiger has pointed out in the Ztschr. d. D. Morg, Ges., 1867, a considerable number of the pieces are alphabetical or nominal acrostics, though the fact is sometimes disguised in the MSS. by the misarrangement of the lines. That he has applied his verse to such prosaic purposes as the refutation of heresy and the inculcation of orthodoxy would seem of itself to make heavily against Ephraem s reputation as a poet ; but it is impossible to read some even of his most unpromising pieces without admitting that he has a genuine poetic gift. Some of his hymns on the death of children may rank for pathos and happy simplicity with the finest lyrics of their class ; and there can be no doubt of the imaginative force of such lines as the following : &quot; For before that time Death by this was made arrogant, and boasted himself of it, Behold priests and kings lie bound by me in the midst of my prisons. A mighty war came without warning againft the tyrant Death; and as a robber, the shouts of the foe sur prised him and humbled his glory. The dead perceived a sweet savour of life in the midst of Hades ; and they began to spread the glad tidings among one another that their hope was accomplished.&quot; Several of the Nisibean poems are impassioned odes on events in contemporary history, and are thus of value to the historical student. The Repentance of Nineveh partakes of the character of the epic. The principal edition of Ephraem s works was prepared and pub lished at Rome under the patronage of the popes Clement XI., Clement XII., and Benedict XIV. It consists of three volumes of Greek texts and three volumes of Syriac texts, with a Latin trans lation. The first vol., published in 1732, was edited by Joseph Simon Assemani, the 4th and 5th (1737 and 1740) by Petrus Benedictus, the 6th (1743) by Benedictus (who died before it was completed) and Stephanus Evodius Assemani, and the 2d and 3d (1743 and 1746) by Joseph Simon Assemani. An earlier edition of 171 pieces in 3 folio volumes, edited by Gerhard Vossius, had appeared at Rome in 1589, 1593, and 1598; and Edward Thwaites had pub lished a folio of Greek texts from Oxford MSS. in 1709. The following are the principal modern contributions to our knowledge of Ephraem and his works : Spohn, Collatio versionis syriacce, quam Pcschito vacant, cum fragment-is in comm. Ephraemi obviis, 1785,1794; Hahn, Bardesanes Gnosticus, 1819; Hahn, &quot;Ueber den Gesang in der Syr. Kirche,&quot; in Staiidlin and Vater s Kircken- historisches ArcUv, 1823; Hahn and Sieffert, Chrestomathia Syriaca sivcS. Ephracmi carmina selccta, 1825; Tschirner, &quot;De Claris veteris ecclesite oratoribus,&quot; in his Opusculaacadcmica, 1829; Pius Zingerle, Ausgewahlte Schriften des Jicil. Kirchcnvaters Ephraem, Innsbruck, 1830-1833; Lengerke, De Ephraemi Syri arte her&amp;gt;neneutica, Kbn-
 * sberg, 1831 ; J. B. Morris, Select Works of St Ephraem the Syrian,