an independent State and an
active centre of trade, but was chiefly noted for its famous temple of
AEsculapius, to which people flocked to be cured of their diseases, and
which bore the inscription "Open only to pure souls"; ruins of a
magnificent theatre are still extant here.

EPIDEMIC, a name given to contagious diseases which, arising
suddenly in a community, rapidly spread through its members, often
travelling from district to district, until often a whole country is
affected; the theory of the transmission of disease by microbes has
largely explained the spread of such scourges, but the part which
atmospheric and other physical, and perhaps psychic, causes play in these
disorders is still matter of debate, especially as regards epidemic
mental diseases. See ENDEMIC.

EPIGONI (the Descendants), the name given to the sons of the Seven
who perished before Thebes; they avenged the death of their fathers by
razing Thebes to the ground; the war first and last has been made the
subject of epic and tragic poems.

EPIGRAM, in modern usage, is a neat, witty, and pointed utterance
briefly couched in verse form, usually satiric, and reserving its sting
to the last line; sometimes made the vehicle of a quaintly-turned
compliment, as, for example, in Pope's couplet to Chesterfield, when
asked to write something with that nobleman's pencil;--

"Accept a miracle; instead of wit,
See two dull lines by Stanhope's pencil writ."

The Latin epigrammatists, especially Martial and Catullus, were the first
to give a satirical turn to the epigram, their predecessors the Greeks
having employed it merely for purposes of epitaph and monumental
inscriptions of a laudatory nature.

EPILEPSY, a violent nervous affection, manifesting itself usually in
sudden convulsive seizures and unconsciousness, followed by temporary
stoppage of the breath and rigidity of the body, popularly known as
"falling sickness"; origin as yet undecided; attributed by the ancients
to demoniacal possession.

EPIMENIDES, a philosopher of Crete of the 7th century B.C., of whom
it is fabled that he fell asleep in a cave when a boy, and that he did
not awake for 57 years, but it was to find himself endowed with all
knowledge and wisdom. He was invited to Athens during a plague to purify
the city, on which occasion he performed certain mysterious rites with
the effect that the plague ceased. The story afforded Goethe a subject
for a drama entitled