Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/502

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ELM—ELM

E P I E P I honours. He refused, however, to accept their gifts, con tenting himself with a branch of the sacred olive, and the exaction of a promise of perpetual friendship between Athens and Guossus. The death of Epimenides is said to have taken place in Crete, although Sparta boasted of possessing his tomb, and doubtless he may have travelled into many different countries, if (as one tradition runs) he attained the age of nearly three hundred years. He was said to have written a poem on the Argonautic expedition, and several other poetical works, and there are grounds for supposing that he may have done so ; but these, with a variety of undoubtedly spurious prose treatises attributed to him in ancient times, are now entirely lost. Epimenides is supposed to be the Cretan prophet to whom St Paul alludes in his epistle to Titus (i. 12). EPINAL, a town of France, capital of the department of Vosges, is situated on both sides of the Moselle, at the foot of the Vosges chain of mountains, and on the railway from Nancy to Bel fort, 35 miles S.S.E. of Nancy and 200 E.S.E. of Paris. The town is tolerably well built, and in its vicinity are some beautiful promenades. It was formerly fortified, and has still the remains of an ancient castle. Its principal buildings are the Gothic parish church, the hotel of the prefecture, the communal college, the barracks, and the departmental prison. It has also a large public library, a museum of paintings and antiquities, a chamber of commerce, and schools of design and music. Its principal manufactures are woollen and linen fabrics, earthenware, cutlery, paper, leather, and chemical products ; and it has a considerable trade in horses, cattle, corn, wine, and wood. Epinal originated towards the end of the 10th century with the founding of a monastery by the bishop of Metz, who ruled the town till 1444, when its inhabitants placed themselves under the protection of Charles VII. In 14G6 it was transferred to the duchy of Lotharingia, and in 1766 it was, along with that duchy, incorporated with France. It was occupied by the Germans on the 12th October 1870 after a short fight, and until the 15th was the head-quarters of General von Werder. The population in 1872 was 10,938. EPINAY, LOUISE FLORENCE PETROXILLE DE LA LIVE i> (1725-1783). a French authoress, well known on account of her liaisons with Rousseau and Barou von Grimm, and her acquaintanceship with Diderot, D Alembert, D Hol- bach, and other French litterateurs, was born at Paris in 1725. Her father, Tardieu d Esclavelles, a brigadier of infantry, was killed in battle when she was nineteen years of age ; and in recognition of his services, the Government arranged that she should marry her cousin De la Live d Epinay, on whom they bestowed the office of farmer-general. The marriage was an unhappy one; and according to her own version of the matter, she believed that the prodigality, dissipation, and infidelities of her husband justified her in regarding herself as freed from all the obligations implied in the conjugal bond. Conceiving a strong attachment for J. J. Rousseau, she in 1756 built for him, in the valley of Montmorency, a cottage which she named the " Hermitage ;" and there, notwithstanding the pleasantries and gay remonstrances of his friends at his forsaking the brilliant society of Paris, he sought for a time to enjoy the quiet and natural rural pleasures for which he always expressed a strong preference. Rousseau, in his Confessions, affirmed that the attachment was all on her side ; but as, after her liaison with Grimm, he became her bitter enemy and detractor, not much weight can be given to his statements on this point. In Grimm s absence from France (1775-76), Madame d Epinay continued, under the superintendence of Diderot, the correspondence he hadbegun with various European sovereigns. She spent the whole of her after life at the " Hermitage," enjoying the society of a small circle of litterateurs, and occupying her spare time chiefly in various kinds of literary composition. She died 17th April 1783. Her Conversations d JZmilie, com posed for the education of her grand-daughter, the Comtesse d Epinay, was crowned by the French Academy in 1783. The Memoir -es et Correspondance de Mm?. d Epinay, renfermant un grand nombre de lettres inedites de Grimm, de Diderot, et de J. J. Rouseau, ainsi que des details, &.C., was published at Paris 1818, The Jfemoires are written by herself in the form of a sort of autobiographic romance, and although they contain much that is mere imagination, and also a great deal of misrepresentation, they are of great value as a picture of the manners and habits of the most eminent Frenchmen of the time. All the letters and documents published along with the Memoires are genuine. Many of Madame d Epi nay s letters are contained in the Correspondance de Vabbe Galiani (Paris, 1818). Two anonymous works, Lettres ct mon FLls (Geneva, 1758) and Mes Moments Heureux (Geneva, 1758), are attributed to Madame d Epinay. EPIPHANIUS, ST, a celebrated father of the church, was born in the beginning of the 4th century at Bezanduca, a village of Palestine, near Eleutheropolis. He is said to have been of Jewish extraction. In his youth he resided in Egypt, where, under the Gnostics, he began an ascetic course of life ; and on his return to Palestine he became a zealous disciple of the patriarch Hilarion, and eventually the president of a monastery which he founded near his native place. In 367 he was nominated bishop of Constantia, previously known as Salamis, the metropolis of Cyprus an office which he held till his death in 402. Zealous for the truth, but passionate, bigoted, and ignorant, he dev.oted himself to furthering the spread of the recently established monasticism, and to the confutation of heresy, of which he regarded Origen and his followers as the chief representatives. The first of the Origenists that he attacked was John, bishop of Jerusalem, whom he denounced from his own pulpit at Jerusalem in terms so violent that the bishop sent his archdeacon to request him to desist ; and afterwards, instigated by Thcophilus, bishop of Alexandria, he proceeded so far as to summon a council of Cyprian bishops to condemn the errors of Origen. His next blow was aimed at Chrysostom, the patriarch of Constantinople, and a pretext was found in the shelter which he had given to four Nitrian monks whom Theophilus had expelled on the charge of Origenism. Finding himself baffled by the authority of Chrysostom, Epiphanius proceeded in extreme old age to Constantinople, and endeavoured to subvert his influence at the court; but having presumptuously announced to the empress Eudoxia that her son, who was then ill, would die unless she ceased to favour the friends of Origen, he was immediately dis missed, and died on the passage home to Cyprus. At his parting interview with Chrysostom, he ia said to have expressed the hope that that patriarch " would not die a bishop ; " and Chrysostom, in retaliation, uttered a wish that " he would never get back in safety to his own country." As both these malevolent wishes were liter ally accomplished, there is reason to suppose that the story may have been fabricated after the event. The principal works of Epiphanius are his Panari^n, or treatise on heresies, of which he also wrote an abridgment ; his Ancoratvs, or discourse on the faith ; and his treatise on the weights and measures of the Jews. These, with two epistles to John of Jerusalem and Jerome, are his only genuine remains. He wrote a large number of works which are lost. The best edition of his works is that of the Jesuit Petavius, 2 vols. fol., Paris, 1622. In allusion to his knowledge of Hebrew, Syriac, Egyptian, Greek, and

Latin, Jerome styles Epiphanius Penlaglottos or Five-