Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/497

Rh E P 1 E P I 477 practically a prototype of our modem wate dug -places. The oAcros, or inclosure, was kept sacred from birth and death ; but rooms were provided in connexion with the temple for the &quot;incubation&quot; of ordinary sick folk. A festival in honour of yEsculapius was celebrated every fourth year, nine days after the Isthmian games at Corinth. The institution acquired great wealth from the offerings of those who received or expected benefit from the god or his priests ; and though it was plundered both by Sulla and the Cilician pirates, it is evident from the character of the ruins that it recovered its prosperity in the later Roman period. Antoninus Pius is especially commemorated on account of the many buildings he restored or erected for the service of the sanctuary. The site of the temple can still be recognized ; the great theatre of Polyclitus is the most perfect ruin of its kind in southern Greece ; and the ground plan of the same architect s &quot; Tholos &quot; of white marble is still to be seen. See Expedition de la Morec, ii. ; Ciatius, PdojiOHHcsu*, ii. ; Trai .s- actio is of Roy. Soc. of Lit., 2nd series, vol. ii. ; &quot;VVeclawski, DC rebus Epidaurioruri, Posen, 1854. EPIDAURUS, a city of the Peloponnesus on the east coast of Laconia, distinguished by the epithet of Limera, which is explained as either the Well-havened or the Hungry. It was founded by the people of Epidaurus the Holy, and its principal temples were those of /Esculapius and Aphrodite. It was abandoned during the Middle Ages ; and its inhabitants took possession of the pi onion to ry of Minoa, turned it into an island, and built and fortified thereon the city of Monembasia (i.e., of the one entrance), which became the most flourishing of all the towns in the Morea, and gave its name, as corrupted by the people of Western Europe, to the well-known Malmsey or Malvasia wine. The rums of Epidaurus are to be seen at the place now called Old Monemvasia. A third Epidaurus was situated in Illyricum, o:j the site of the present Vecchia Ragusa ; but it is not mentioned till the time of the civil wars of Pompey and Caesar, and has no special interest. EP1GONI, a Greek word denoting simply sons or descendants, but applied more particularly to certain mythical chiefs who fought against Thebes. After the terrible catastrophe which brought about the death of lokaste (Jocasta) and the blinding of CEdipus, Eteocles and Polynices, the sous of this ill fated pair, incurred the wrath of their father, whom they cast out from his borne to fight with poverty as well as blindness The curse of the aged king worked in the dissensions of the two brothers, and Polynices, driven into exile, made his way to Argos, where Adrastus took up his cause. The result was the enterprise which Attic tradition spoke of as the expedition of the Seven Argive Chiefs against Thebes, but which, according to the poets of the Thebais, involved as large a gathering as that of the chieftains who assembled to hunt the Calydonian boar or to recover the Golden Fleece. This strife was fatal, as the prophecies of Melaru- pous had declared it must be, to all the chiefs engaged in it with the exception of Adrastus, the seer Amphiaraus being saved from death only by the opening of the earth, which received him alive with his chariot into her bosom. Thus ended the first assault of the Argives against Thebes, au assault which answers closely to the first ineffectual attempts of the Heraclids to recover their paternal in heritance in the Peloponnesus. As in the other tradition, with which the Theban story was parallel, it was followed by a second attack in the struggle known as the war of the Epigoni, or the children of the discomfited chiefs of the former expedition. The doom of Thebes was now come, and the Epigoni appeared, like the Heraclids, w-hen their period of enforced idleness is at an end. The Thebans are utterly routed by the Argives under Alcmaeon, the son of Amphiaraus ; and the prophet Tiresias declares that there is no longer any hope, as the gods have abandoned them. The city is therefore surrendered, and Thersandrus, the son of Polynices, is seated on the throne of Cadmus. How far the poets of the Thebais, which treated of these wars, may have imparted to their subject the charm of our Iliad or Odyssey, the scanty fragments of the poem, which alone we possess, make it impossible to say; but there can be no doubt that there were incidents in the struggle which might be so treated as to win, for it a title to the high praise bestowed upon it by Pausanias (ix. 9, 3). EPIGRAMS. Nothing perhaps could be more hopeless than an attempt to discover or devise a definition wide enough to include the vast multitude of little poems which at one time or other have been honoured with the title of epigram, and precise enough to exclude all others. Without taking account of its evident misapplications, we find that the name has been given first, in strict accordance with its Greek etymology from iTuypdfaiv, to inscribe, to any actual inscription on monument, statue, or building ; secondly, to verses never intended for such a purpose, but assuming for artistic reasons the epigraphical form ; thirdly, to verses expressing with something of the terseness of an inscription a striking or beautiful thought ; and fourthly, by un warrantable restriction, to a little poem ending in a &quot; point,&quot; especially of the satirical kind. The last of these has obtained considerable popularity from the well-known lines &quot; The qualities rare ill a bee that we meet In an epigram never should fail; The body should always be little and sweet, And a sting should be left in its tail which represent the older Latin of some unknown writer &quot; Onuie epigramma sit instar apis : sit aculeus illi ; Sint sua mella, sit et corporis exigui.&quot; Attempts not a few of a more elaborate kind have been made to state the essential element of the epigram, and to classify existing specimens ; but, as every lover of epigrams must feel, most of them have been attended with very partial success. Scaliger, in the third book of his Poetics, gives a fivefold division, which displays a certain ingenuity in the nomenclatuie but is very superficial : the first class takes its name from md, or honey, and consists of adulatory specimens : the second from ftl, or gall ; the third from acettim, or vinegar ; and the fourth from sal, or salt; while the fifth is styled the condensed, or multiplex. This classification is adopted by Nicolaus Mercerius in his De conscribendo epiyrammate, Paris, 1653 ; but he supple mented it by another of much more scientific value, based on the figures of the ancient rhetoricians. Lessing, in the preface to his own epigrams, gives an interesting treatment of the theory, his principal doctrine being practically the same as that of several of his less eminent predecessors, that there ought to be two parts more or less clearly distinguished, the first awakening the reader s attention in the same way as an actual monument might do, and the other satisfying his curiosity in some unexpected manner. An attempt was made by Herder to increase the comprehensiveness and pre cision of the theory ; but as he himself confesses, his classifi cation is rather vague the expository, the paradigmatic, the pictorial, the impassioned, the artfully turned, the illusory, and the swift. After all, if the arrangement accord ing to authorship be rejected, the simplest and most satis factory is according to subjects. The epigram is one of the most catholic of literary forms, and lends itself to the expres sion of almost any feeling or thought. It may be an elegy, a satire, or a love-poem in miniature, au embodiment of the wisdom of the ages, a bon-mot set off with a couple of rhymes.