Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/692

 680 EPIIRAIM EPICURUS taining the works in Syriac and Latin and 3 the Greek texts, l732-'46). A good German translation of a large portion of his works was published by Pius Zingerle, at Innspruck (1830- '38). A tasteful English translation of several hymns, songs, and homilies was made by Henry Burgess ("Select Metrical Hymns and Homi- lies of Ephraem Syrus," 2 vols., London, 1853). Bickell has edited Ephraemi Syri Carmina Nisibena, additis Prolegomena et Supplemento Lexicorum Syriacorum (2 vols., Leipsic, 1866). EPHRAIJI, second son of Joseph, the founder of the tribe of Ephraim. The tribe occupied one of the finest and most fruitful territories of Palestine, in the very centre of the land. It included most of the province afterward called Samaria, and contained many of the most dis- tinguished places of Palestine between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, having the tribes of Dan and Benjamin on the south and of Manasseh on the north. It was crossed by the mountain range bearing its name. The tribe of Ephraim often appears as the repre- sentative of the ten tribes, or the northern Hebrew state, both in historical and prophetical passages of the Scriptures. It held for a long time the ark and the tabernacle at Shiloh. Next to Judah it was the most warlike of the tribes, and gave to Israel several celebrated leaders and kings. EPICHARMUS, a Greek dramatic poet, born on the island of Cos about 540 B. C., died in 450, or according to Lucian in 443. He went to Syracuse about 483, and there passed the remainder of his life. He conceived the idea of transforming the loosely constructed farces of which the Sicilian comedy consisted into pieces as regular and correct as the Athenian tragedies. He effected as great a reform in comedy as ^Eschylus in tragedy, diminishing the number of the actors, and introducing a more elegant and poetic language and a more elaborate plot. He was the author of 52, or according to some of 35 comedies, of which only the titles remain. His works were espe- cially esteemed by Plato, who makes many quotations from them. EPICTETUS, a Roman Stoic philosopher, born in Hierapolis, Phrygia, in the 1st century of our era, died in the first half of the 2d century. In his youth he was a slave of Epaphroditus, one of the guards of Nero. Epaphroditus having struck him heavily on the leg, he said to him, " You will break my leg." The pre- diction was speedily fulfilled, when the philo- sophic slave said again calmly, "Did not I tell you you would break it?" This extreme insensibility to pain was a fundamental princi- ple in the philosophy of Epictetus. He be- came a freedman, though neither the cause nor the time of his emancipation is known. He was involved in the proscription by which Domitian banished all philosophers from Rome, and retired to Nicopolis in Epirus, where he opened a school of Stoic philosophy, and held those conversations which have been preserved in the " Manual " and " Philosophical Lec- tures " compiled from his discourses by his pupil Arrian. Like the other Stoic philoso- phers, he taught by his example. He esteemed philosophy to be neither profound speculation nor eloquent discourse, but the love and prac- tice of virtue. His teachings are summed up in the formula, "Bear and forbear." Recog- nizing only will and reason, his highest con- ception of life was to be passionless under whatever circumstances. " Man," he said, " is but a pilot; observe the star, hold the rudder, and be not distracted on thy way." Epictetus himself is supposed to have committed nothing to writing. The best edition of all the remain- ing works of Arrian is that of Schweighauser, in the collection entitled Epictetece Philosophies Monumenta (5 vols. 8vo, Leipsic, 1799-1800). They were translated into English by Elizabeth Carter (London, 1758). A new translation by T. W. Higginson, with a sketch of Epictetue, appeared in Boston in 1865. EPICURUS, a Greek philosopher, born in the island of Samos in 342 B. C., died in 270. When 18 years of age he went to Athens, where he became a pupil of Pamphilius, and an admirer of the doctrines of Democritus. He travelled for several years, and in his 30th year established a school of philosophy at Athens, to which his fame soon attracted a great number of pupils. "With them he con- stituted a community which has always been considered as a model of its kind. He enjoyed the respect and love of his followers to such a degree that his sayings had almost the value of oracles. No other ancient school of philosophy has evinced a cohesive power equal to that of Epicurus. Epicureanism has become almost a synonyme of sensualism, or at least a refined voluptuousness, but nothing was further from the meaning of his doctrines. It is true that he taught evdai/uovia to be the highest end and purpose of human life, but this word was in- tended to designate a state of supreme mental bliss, to be attained only by temperance, chas- tity, and a healthy intellectual development. That bliss, consisting in a perfect repose of mind, in an equilibrium of all mental faculties and passions, is perhaps not very different from the state of mind which the Stoics con- sidered the acme of human perfection, al- though they were the most unrelenting adver- saries of Epicureanism. Epicurus was a man of unsullied morality. Diogenes Laertius es- timates the number of his works at 300 or more. He boasted of having never used any quotations in order to swell his volumes. Few of his writings have been preserved, but a full analysis of his doctrines is to be found in Di- ogenes Laertius, and this, taken in connection with numerous passages in the writings of Lucretius, Cicero, Pliny, and others, gives us a full insight into his philosophical system. Within the present century a fragment of his book on nature has been recovered from the ruins of Herculaneum, and published by Orelli