and poems, and so
great was his piety and self-denial, that he was looked upon as a saint,
and is still so reverenced in several Churches (320-370).

EPHRAIM, one of the 12 tribes of Israel, the one to which Joshua
belonged, located in the centre of the land; powerful in the days of the
Judges, the chief of the 10 tribes that revolted under Jeroboam after the
death of Solomon, and is found often to give name to the whole body of
them.

EPIC, a poem that treats of the events in the life of a nation or a
race or the founder of one, agreeably to the passion inspiring it and in
such form as to kindle and keep alive the heroism thereof in the
generations thereafter; or a poem in celebration of the thoughts,
feelings, and feats of a whole nation or race; its proper function is to
_disimprison_ the soul of the related facts and give a noble rendering of
them; of compositions of this kind the "Iliad" of Homer, the "AEneid" of
Virgil, and the "Divine Comedy" of Dante take the lead.

EPIC MELODY, melody in accord with the feeling of the whole race or
the subject as a whole.

EPICHARIS, a Roman lady who conspired against Nero and strangled
herself rather than reveal her accomplices after undergoing the cruellest
tortures.

EPICHARMUS, a Greek philosopher and poet in the island of Cos;
studied philosophy under Pythagoras; conceived a taste for comedy; gave
himself up to that branch of the drama, and received the name of the
"Father of Comedy"; lived eventually at the court of Hiero of Syracuse
(540-430 B.C.).

EPICTETUS, a celebrated Stoic philosopher of the 1st century,
originally a slave; lived and taught at Rome, but after the expulsion of
the philosophers retired to Nicopolis, in Epirus; was lame, and lived in
poverty; his conversations were collected by Arrian, and his philosophy
in a short manual under the Greek name of "Enchiridion of Epictetus,"
written, as is alleged, in utter obliviousness of the fact that "the end
of man is an action, not a thought."

EPICUREANS, a sect of philosophers who derived their name from
Epicurus, and who divided the empire of philosophy with the STOICS
(q. v.), at the birth of Christ; they held that the chief end of man
was happiness, that the business of philosophy was to guide him in the
pursuit of it, and that it was only by experience that one could learn
what would lead to it and what would not; they scouted the idea of reason
as regulative of thought, and conscienc