Fehérvár proclaimed it, Eötvös cited him to appear at the capital ad audiendum verbum regium. He was a constant defender of the composition with Austria (Ausgleich), and during the absence of Andrássy used to preside over the council of ministers; but the labours of the last few years were too much for his failing health, and he died at Pest on the 2nd of February 1871. On the 3rd of May 1879 a statue was erected to him at Pest in the square which bears his name.
Eötvös occupied as prominent a place in Hungarian literature as in Hungarian politics. His peculiarity, both as a politician and as a statesman, lies in the fact that he was a true philosopher, a philosopher at heart as well as in theory; and in his poems and novels he clothed in artistic forms all the great ideas for which he contended in social and political life. The best of his verses are to be found in his ballads, but his poems are insignificant compared with his romances. It was The Carthusians, written on the occasion of the floods at Pest in 1838, that first took the public by storm. The Magyar novel was then in its infancy, being chiefly represented by the historico-epics of Jósiká. Eötvös first modernized it, giving prominence in his pages to current social problems and political aspirations. The famous Village Notary came still nearer to actual life, while Hungary in 1514, in which the terrible Dozsa Jacquerie (see Dozsa) is so vividly described, is especially interesting because it rightly attributes the great national catastrophe of Mohács to the blind selfishness of the Magyar nobility and the intense sufferings of the people. Yet, as already stated, all these books are written with a moral purpose, and their somewhat involved and difficult style is, nowadays at any rate, a trial to those who are acquainted with the easy, brilliant and lively novels of Jókai.
The best edition of Eötvös’ collected works is that of 1891, in 17 vols. Comparatively few of his writings have been translated, but there are a good English version (London, 1850) and numerous German versions of The Village Notary, while The Emancipation of the Jews has been translated into Italian and German (Pest, 1841–1842), and a German translation of Hungary in 1514, under the title of Der Bauernkrieg in Ungarn was published at Pest in 1850.
See A. Bán, Life and Art of Baron Joseph Eötvös (Hung.) (Budapest, 1902); Zoltan Ferenczi Baron Joseph Eötvös (Hung.) (Budapest, 1903) [this is the best biography]; and M. Berkovics, Baron Joseph Eotvos and the French Literature (Hung.) (Budapest, 1904). (R. N. B.)
EPAMINONDAS (c. 418–362), Theban general and statesman,
born about 418 B.C. of a noble but impoverished family. For
his education he was chiefly indebted to Lysis of Tarentum, a
Pythagorean exile who had found refuge with his father Polymnis.
He first comes into notice in the attack upon Mantineia in 385,
when he fought on the Spartan side and saved the life of his future
colleague Pelopidas. In his youth Epaminondas took little
part in public affairs; he held aloof from the political assassinations
which preceded the Theban insurrection of 379. But in the
following campaigns against Sparta he rendered good service in
organizing the Theban defence. In 371 he represented Thebes
at the congress in Sparta, and by his refusal to surrender the
Boeotian cities under Theban control prevented the conclusion
of a general peace. In the ensuing campaign he commanded
the Boeotian army which met the Peloponnesian levy at Leuctra,
and by a brilliant victory on this site, due mainly to his daring
innovations in the tactics of the heavy infantry, established at
once the predominance of Thebes among the land-powers of
Greece and his own fame as the greatest and most original of
Greek generals. At the instigation of the Peloponnesian states
which armed against Sparta in consequence of this battle,
Epaminondas in 370 led a large host into Laconia; though
unable to capture Sparta he ravaged its territory and dealt a
lasting blow at Sparta’s predominance in Peloponnesus by liberating
the Messenians and rebuilding their capital at Messene.
Accused on his return to Thebes of having exceeded the term of
his command, he made good his defence and was re-elected
boeotarch. In 369 he forced the Isthmus lines and secured
Sicyon for Thebes, but gained no considerable successes. In the
following year he served as a common soldier in Thessaly, and
upon being reinstated in command contrived the safe retreat
of the Theban army from a difficult position. Returning to
Thessaly next year at the head of an army he procured the
liberation of Pelopidas from the tyrant Alexander of Pherae
without striking a blow. In his third expedition (366) to Peloponnesus,
Epaminondas again eluded the Isthmus garrison and
won over the Achaeans to the Theban alliance. Turning his
attention to the growing maritime power of Athens, Epaminondas
next equipped a fleet of 100 triremes, and during a cruise to the
Propontis detached several states from the Athenian confederacy.
When subsequent complications threatened the
position of Thebes in Peloponnesus he again mustered a large
army in order to crush the newly formed Spartan league (362).
After some masterly operations between Sparta and Mantineia,
by which he nearly captured both these towns, he engaged in a
decisive battle on the latter site, and by his vigorous shock
tactics gained a complete victory over his opponents (see
Mantineia). Epaminondas himself received a severe wound
during the combat, and died soon after the issue was decided.
His title to fame rests mainly on his brilliant qualities both as a strategist and as a tactician; his influence on military art in Greece was of the greatest. For the purity and uprightness of his character he likewise stood in high repute; his culture and eloquence equalled the highest Attic standard. In politics his chief achievement was the final overthrow of Sparta’s predominance in the Peloponnese; as a constructive statesman he displayed no special talent, and the lofty pan-Hellenic ambitions which are imputed to him at any rate never found a practical expression.
Cornelius Nepos, Vita Epaminondae; Diodorus xv. 52-88; Xenophon, Hellenica, vii.; L. Pomtow, Das Leben des Epaminondas (Berlin, 1870); von Stein, Geschichte der spartanischen und thebanischen Hegemonie (Dorpat, 1884), pp. 123 sqq.; H. Swoboda in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, v. pt. 2 (Stuttgart, 1905), pp. 2674-2707; also Army: History, § 6. (M. O. B. C.)
EPARCH, an official, a governor of a province of Roman
Greece, ἐπαρχος, whose title was equivalent to, or represented
that of the Roman praefectus. The area of his administration
was called an eparchy (ἐπαρχία). The term survives as one of
the administrative units of modern Greece, the country being
divided into nomarchies, subdivided into eparchies, again subdivided
into demarchies (see Greece: Local Administration).
“Eparch” and “eparchy” are also used in the Russian Orthodox
Church for a bishop and his diocese respectively.
EPAULETTE (a French word, from épaule, a shoulder),
properly a shoulder-piece, and so applied to the shoulder-knot of
ribbon to which a scapulary was attached, worn by members of a
religious order. The military usage was probably derived from
the metal plate (épaulière) which protected the shoulder in the
defensive armour of the 16th century. It was first used merely
as a shoulder knot to fasten the baldric, and the application of
it to mark distinctive grades of rank was begun in France at the
suggestion, it is said, of Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet, duc de
Belle-Isle, in 1759. In modern times it always appears as a
shoulder ornament for military and naval uniforms. At first it
consisted merely of a fringe hanging from the end of the shoulder-strap
or cord over the sleeve, but towards the end of the 18th
century it became a solid ornament, consisting of a flat shoulder-piece,
extended beyond the point of the shoulder into an oval
plate, from the edge of which hangs a thick fringe, in the case of
officers of gold or silver. The epaulette is worn in the British
navy by officers above the rank of sub-lieutenant; in the army
it ceased to be worn about 1855. It is worn by officers in the
United States navy above the rank of ensign; since 1872 it is
only worn by general officers in the army. In most other
countries epaulettes are worn by officers, and in the French
army by the men also, with a fringe of worsted, various distinctions
of shape and colour being observed between ranks,
corps and arms of the service. The “scale” is similar to the
epaulette, but has no fringe.
ÉPÉE, CHARLES-MICHEL, Abbé de l’ (1712–1789), celebrated
for his labours in behalf of the deaf and dumb, was born at Paris
on the 25th of November 1712, being the son of the king’s architect.
He studied for the church, but having declined to sign a
religious formula opposed to the doctrines of the Jansenists, he
was denied ordination by the bishop of his diocese. He then
