f
men were about to sup with Falstaff, in Eastcheap, and calls
them "Ephesians," he probably meant soldiers called _fethas_
("foot-soldiers"), and hence topers. Malone suggests that the word is
a pun on _pheese_ ("to chastise or pay one tit for tat"), and means
"quarrelsome fellows."

EPHESIAN POET (_The_), Hipponax, born at Ephesus (sixth century
B.C.).

EPIC POETRY (_The Father of_), Homer (about 950 B.C.).

EPICENE (_3 syl._), or _The Silent Woman_, one of the three great
comedies of Ben Jonson (1609).

The other two are _Volpone_ (_2 syl._, 1605), and _The Alchemist_
(1610).

EPICURUS. The _aimee de coeur_ of this philosopher was Leontium. (See
LOVERS).

EPICURUS OF CHINA, Tao-tse, who commenced the search for "the elixir
of perpetual youth and health" (B.C. 540).

[Illustration] Thomas Moore has a prose romance entitled _The
Epicure'an_. Lucretius the Roman poet, in his _De Rerum Natura_, is an
exponent of the Epicurean doctrines.

EPIDAURUS (_That God in_), Aescula'pius, son of Apollo, who was
worshipped in Epidaurus, a city of Peloponne'sus. Being sent for to
Rome during a plague, he assumed the form of a serpent.--Livy, _Nat.
Hist._, xi.; Ovid, _Metaph._, xv.

Never since of serpent kind
Lovelier, not those that in Illyria changed
Hermione and Cadmus, or the god
In Epidaurus.

Milton, _Paradise Lost_, ix. 507 (1665).

(Cadmus and his wife Harmonia [_Hermoine_] left Thebes and migrated
into Illyria, where they were changed into serpents because they
happened to kill one belonging to Mars.)

EPHIAL'TES (_4 syl._), one of the giants who made war upon the gods.
He was deprived of his left eye by Apollo, and of his right eye by
Hercules.

EPIG'ONI, seven youthful warriors, sons of the seven chiefs who laid
siege to Thebes. All the seven chiefs (except Adrastos) perished in
the siege; but the seven sons, ten years later, took the city and
razed it to the ground. The chiefs and sons were: (1) Adrastos,
whose son was Aegi'aleus (_4 syl._); (2) Polynikes, whose son was
Thersan'der; (3) Amphiar'aos (_5 syl._), whose son was Alkmaeon
(_the chief_); (4) Ty'deus (_2 syl._), whose son was Diome'des; (5)
Kap'aneus (_3 syl._), whose son was Sthen'elos; (6) Parthenopae'os,
whose son was Promachos; (7) Mekis'theus (_3 syl._), whose son was
Eury'alos.

AEschylos has a tragedy on _The Seven Chiefs against Thebes_. There
are also two epics, one _The Thebaid_ of Statius, and _The Epigoni_
sometimes att