Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 06.djvu/703

ECARTE. 613 ECCENTRIC. proposes, which means, briefly, that he wislies to gel rid of poor cards and take up others from the stock, and tlie dealer can accept or refuse. Should he accept, each may discard, face down- ward, as many cards as he may choose, receiving fresh ones from the cards yet undealt, these being given first to the non-dealer till his liand is com- plete. A second proposal and a third may be made, and so on till the player is salislied; but if the dealer refuse, the hand must he played without discarding. The king of trumps scores one if in either hand. The non-dealer being satis- fied with his hand, leads; the dealer follows, and the trick is taken by the highest card or the trump. The king is the highest. The win- ner of a t rick leads to the nc.t. The second jilayer must follow suit, and must win the trick if he can. The game is scored by the king, as explained, and the majority of tricks. Three tricks score one for the jioint : all five tricks won by one player score two for the vole. When the non-dealer does not propose, or his proposal is refused, and he fails to gain three tricks, the dealer scores two, but no more, even though he win the role. The game is five up. Consult: 'Cavendish,' Pocket Guide to Ecarte (London, 1870) ; The Latin of Ecarte Adopted hy the Turf Club (London, 1S78). ECBAT'ANA (OPers. Hangmataiia, written HatiniutuiM. jirubably place of assembly, from hatii, Skt. sum, together + jfani, to come; Babyl. Agamatanu, Agamtanu, Heb. Achmctha, Lat. Ecbatana, Gk. 'Ex^drai/a, Ekbatana, ' Ay^drava, Agbatana) . The ancient capital of Media. It was situated at a distance of 12 stadia (about I'i miles) from !Mount Orontes, the modern Elvend. It lay upon a conical hill, crowned by a temple of the sun, and was inclosed by seven concentric walls, the innermost of which was gilded and the ne.t plated with silver; while the rest, in their order outward, were painted orange, blue, scarlet, black, and white. The city is said to have been nearly .30 miles in cir- cumference. Its principal buildings were the citadel — a stronghold of enormous dimensions, where also the archives were kept in which Darius found the edict of Cyrus the Great con- cerning the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusa- lem — and the royal palace. The mild climate and the magnificence of its structure singled out Ecbatana as the favorite summer residence, first of the ^fedian. then of the Persian, and lastly of the Parthian nionarchs. After the battle of Arl)ela (B.C. 3.31), Alexander followed Darius thither and secured immense booty. It was again jjillagcd by the Seleucida-: but such were the riches of this place that Antiochus the Great still found 4000 talents' worth of silver, equivalent to more than .$4,000,000. to carry away. Ecbatana subsequently fell into the hands of the Parthians, and it has since so utterly sunk into decay that its site can no longer be fixed upon with certainty. But nowadays, scholars generally agree that the present Ilamadan, with the rej)nted tombs of Jlordecai and Esther (.see II.M. ..N ) , occupies the site of ancient Ecbatana. Excavations on the site would no doubt yield valuable finds in the way of an- tiquities. There was another Ecbatana in Per- sia, which was given to the Magi, and a third in Syria, at the foot of Carmel, the present Haifa, where Cambyses, the son of C>'ru9, died. ECCARD, ,'k'kart, .Toii..NNES ( I55.3-I(JU ) . A German cumposer of Church music. He was bora at Miihlhaiiseu ( Tliuringia) . was a pupil of Or- lando l^asso at Munich, and became assistant con- ductor in loS'.i and chapelmastcr in 15!)!) at Ko- nigsberg. In KiOS he was chief conductor of the Elector's chapel in Berlin. IHs songs, cantatas, and chorales live by reason of their lianiiony and religious feeling, .iiiong the collection of his songs are '•Geistliche Lieder" (1597), and "Preussische Festlieder" ( 1598 ) . ECCE HOMO, ek'sS hO'mfi (Lat., Behold the Man) . Tliis expression is derived from the words spoken by Pilate on showing Christ to the multi- tude (.lolin xix. 5) previous to His being led forth to crucifixion, and is applied to paintings representing Christ bound and crowned with thorns. One of the finest "Ecce Ilomos" is that of Correggio. in the National Gallery in London, but the i)est known are those of Guido Reni. ECCE HOMO: A Study of thi! Life and Work of .Test's Christ. A religious work by ■ lohn Robert Seeley. professor at Cambridge Uni- versity, England, which appeared anonymously in 1865, and was designed to show the humanity of Christ. Its contents created some contro- versy within the Protestant Church. ECCENTRIC (from Lat. eccentros, Gk. ^kkcv- rpos, cI.Lciitios, eccentric, from iK, ek, out -|- Kiirrpov, keiitron, cenire) . A mechanical contri- vance for obtaining an alternating rectilinear mo- tion from a revolving shaft. It consists of a circular disk fixed on a shaft in such a position that the latter docs not pass through the centre of the disk. The disk, which has a groove upon its circumference, is surrounded by a hoop to which is attached a rod. As the eccentric revolves with the shaft, the hoop is alternately raised and lowered, thus imjjarting a to-and-fro motion to the rod. The extent of the rise and fall of the rod is eqxial to twice the distance between tne centres. The eccentric is chiefiy used where a subsidiary motion of small power is required — as for working the force-pump that supplies the boiler of a steam-engine, or for operating slide- valves for steam-engines. See Crank ; Cam ; Steam-Engixe. ECCENTRIC, or Eccentric Circle. It was a fundamental doctrine with the ancient as- tronomers that every heavenly body moved in a circle ('the perfect figure') and at a uniform rate. But some of them appeared to move un- steadily, and in other figures than circles. Of course, this was considered a mere deceptive appearance. To explain it, they invented the 'eccentric circle.' Suppose a body, such as the sun, to move in a circle at a uniform rate. To an observer at the centre of the circle, the uni- formity of the motion is evident — i.e. the sun is seen to travel through equal angular distances in equal times. But to an observer situated at some point half way between the centre of the circle and the circumference, the angular dis- tances traveled through in equal times appear unequal. If, then, the earth, instead of being at the centre of the sun's orbit, be supposed to oc- cupy a jiosition away from it, the want of regu- larity in the sun's movements is explained. Ac- cordingly, to reconcile the observed fact with their fundamental doctrine, the ancients placed the earth at a point away from the centre of