The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 187

EPSOM, a market-town in Surrey, skirting Banstead Downs, 15 m. SW.

of London; formerly noted for its mineral springs, now a.s.sociated with the famous Derby races.

EQUINOCTIAL POINTS are the two points at which the celestial equator intersects the ECLIPTIC (q. v.), so called because the days and nights are of equal duration when the sun is at these points.

EQUINOXES, the two annually recurring times at which the sun arrives at the EQUINOCTIAL POINTS (q. v.), viz., 21st March and 22nd September, called respectively the vernal and the autumnal equinoxes in the northern hemisphere, but vice versa in the southern; at these times the sun is directly over the equator, and day and night is then of equal length over the whole globe.

EQUITES, THE, a celebrated equestrian order in ancient Rome, supposed to have been inst.i.tuted by Romulus; at first purely military, it was at length invested with the judicial functions of the Senate, and the power of farming out the public revenues; gradually lost these privileges and became defunct.

ERASMUS, DESIDERIUS, a famous scholar and man of letters, born at Rotterdam; illegitimate son of one Gerhard; conceived a disgust for monkish life during six years' residence in a monastery at Steyn; wandered through Europe and ama.s.sed stores of learning at various universities; visited Oxford in 1489, and formed a lifelong friends.h.i.+p with Sir Thomas More; was for some years professor of Divinity and Greek at Cambridge; edited the first Greek Testament; settled finally at Basel, whence he exercised a remarkable influence over European thought by the wit and tone of his writings, notably the "Praise of Folly," the "Colloquia" and "Adagia"; he has been regarded as the precursor of the Reformation; is said to have laid the egg which Luther hatched; aided the Reformation by his scholars.h.i.+p, though he kept aloof as a scholar from the popular movement of Luther (1467-1536).

ERASTIANISM, the right of the State to override and overrule the decisions of the Church that happen to involve civil penalties. See ERASTUS.

ERASTUS, an eminent physician, born at Baden, in Switzerland, whose fame rests mainly on the att.i.tude he a.s.sumed in the theological and ecclesiastical questions of the day; he defended Zwingli's view of the Eucharist as a merely symbolical ordinance, and denied the right of the Church to inflict civil penalties, or to exercise discipline--the power of the keys--that belonging, he maintained, to the province of the civil magistrate and not to the Church (1534-1583).

ERATO (i. e. the Lovely), the muse of erotic poetry and elegy, represented with a lyre in her left hand.

ERATOSTHENES, surnamed the Philologist, a philosopher of Alexandria, born at Cyrene, 276 B.C.; becoming blind and tired of life, he starved himself to death at the age of 80; he ranks high among ancient astronomers; measured the obliquity of the ecliptic, and estimated the size of the earth (276-194 B.C.).

ERCILLA Y ZUnIGA, a Spanish poet, born at Madrid; took part in the war of the Spaniards with the Araucos in Chile, which he celebrated in an epic of no small merit called "La Araucana"; he ended his days in poverty (1553-1595).

ERDGEIST, the Spirit of the Earth, represented in Goethe's "Faust"

as a.s.siduously weaving, at the Time-Loom, night and day, in death as well as life, the earthly vesture of the Eternal, and thereby revealing the Invisible to mortal eyes.

ERDMANN, a German philosopher, born at Wolmar, professor at Halle; was of the school of Hegel, an authority on the history of philosophy (1805-1892).

EREBUS, a region of utter darkness in the depths of Hades, into which no mortal ever penetrated, the proper abode of Pluto and his Queen with their train of attendants, such as the Erinnyes, through which the spirits of the dead must pa.s.s on their way to Hades; equivalent to the valley of the shadow of death.

ERECTHEUS or ERICHTHONIUS, the mythical first king of Athens; favoured and protected from infancy by Athena, to whom accordingly he dedicated the city; he was buried in the temple of Athena, and wors.h.i.+pped afterwards as a G.o.d; it is fabled of him that when an infant he was committed by Athena in a chest to the care of Agraulos and Herse, under a strict charge not to pry into it; they could not restrain their curiosity, opened the chest, saw the child entwined with serpents, were seized with madness, and threw themselves down from the height of the Acropolis to perish at the foot.

ERFURT (72), a town in Saxony, on the Gera, 14 m. W. of Weimar, formerly capital of Thuringia, and has many interesting buildings, amongst the number the 14th-century Gothic cathedral with its great bell, weighing 13 tons, and cast in 1497; the monastery of St. Augustine (changed into an orphanage in 1819), in which Luther was a monk; the Academy of Sciences, and the library with 60,000 vols. and 1000 MSS.; various textile factories flourish.

ERGOT, a diseased state of gra.s.ses, &c., but a disease chiefly attacking rye, produced by a fungus developing on the seeds; the drug "ergot of rye" is obtained from a species of this fungus.

ERIC, the name of several of the kings of Denmark, and Sweden, and Norway, the most notorious being the son of the n.o.ble Swedish king GUSTAVUS VASA (q. v.), who aspired to the hand of Elizabeth of England and challenged his rival Leicester to a duel; afterwards sought Mary of Scotland, but eventually married a peasant girl who had nursed him out of madness brought on by dissipation; was deposed after a State trial instigated by his own brothers, and ultimately poisoned himself in prison eight years later (1533-1577).

ERIC THE RED, a Norwegian chief who discovered Greenland in the 10th century, and sent out expeditions to the coast of North America.

ERICSSON, JOHN, a distinguished Swedish engineer, born at Langbanshyttan; went to England in 1826 and to United States of America in 1839, where he died; invented the screw propeller of steams.h.i.+ps; built wars.h.i.+ps for the American navy, and amongst them the famous _Monitor_; his numerous inventions mark a new era in naval and steams.h.i.+p construction (1802-1889).

ERIE, LAKE, the fourth in size among the giant lakes of North America, lies between Lakes Huron and Ontario, on the Canadian border, is 240 m. long and varies from 30 to 60 m. in breadth; is very shallow, and difficult to navigate; ice-bound from December till about April.

ERIGENA, JOHANNES SCOTUS, a rationalistic mystic, the most distinguished scholar and thinker of the 9th century, of Irish birth; taught at the court of Charles the Bald in France, and was summoned by Alfred to Oxford in 877; died abbot of Malmesbury; held that "d.a.m.nation was simply the consciousness of having failed to fulfil the divine purpose"; he derived all authority from reason, and not reason from authority, maintaining that authority unfounded on reason was of no value; _d_. 882.

ERIN, the ancient Celtic name of Ireland, used still in poetry.

ERINNA, a Greek poetess, the friend of Sappho, died at 19; wrote epic poetry, all but a few lines of which has perished; born about 612 B.C.

ERINNYES, THE (i. e. the roused-to-anger, in Latin, the Furies), the Greek G.o.ddesses of vengeance, were the daughters of Gaia, begotten of the blood of the wounded Ura.n.u.s, and at length reckoned three in number, Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megara; they were conceived of as haunting the wicked on earth and scourging them in h.e.l.l; they were of the court of Pluto, and the executioners of his wrath.

ERIS, the Greek G.o.ddess of strife or discord, sowing the seeds thereof among the G.o.ds to begin with, which she has since continued to do among men.

ERIVAN (15), a fortified town in Transcaucasia, situated 30 m. NE.

of Mount Ararat on an elevated plateau; was ceded to Russia in 1828 by Persia.

ERLANGEN (13), a Bavarian town on the Regnitz, has a celebrated Protestant university, founded by Wilhelmina, sister of Frederick the Great, who was the Electress; was a place of refuge for the Huguenots in 1685; manufactures in gloves, mirrors, and tobacco are carried on, and brewing.

ERLAU (22), an ecclesiastical city of Hungary, on the Erlau, 89 m.

NE. of Pesth; is the seat of an archbishop; has a fine cruciform cathedral, built since 1837, several monasteries, a lyceum with a large library and an observatory; is noted for its red wine.

ERL-KING, a Norse impersonation of the spirit of superst.i.tious fear which haunts and kills us even in the guardian embrace of paternal affection.

ERMINIA, a Syrian, the heroine of Ta.s.so's "Jerusalem Delivered," in love with the Christian prince Tancred.

ERNESTI, JOHANN AUGUST, a celebrated German cla.s.sicist and theologian, called the "German Cicero," born at Tennstadt, Thuringia; professor of Philology in Leipzig, and afterwards of Theology; edited various cla.s.sical works, his edition of Cicero specially noted; was the first to apply impartial textual criticism to the Bible, and to him, in consequence, we owe the application of a more correct exegesis to the biblical writings (1707-1781).

ERNST, ELECTOR OF SAXONY, founder of the Ernestine line of Saxon princes, ancestor of Prince Consort, born at Altenburg; was kidnapped along with his brother Albert in 1455, an episode famous in German history as the "Prinzenraub" (i. e. the stealing of the prince); succeeded his father in 1464; annexed Thuringia in 1482, and three years later shared his territory with his brother Albert (1441-1486).