Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/321

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
EUP
295
EUR

Valour; statues of Philip and of Alexander in quadrigæ, and a statue of a beautiful woman expressing at the same time admiration and worship. With the exception of a statue of Paris in the Vatican, which is believed to be a fac-simile of one by Euphranor, no relic of his art has come down to us; and in pronouncing upon the merit of his works, as well as upon their number, we must therefore be guided entirely by the classical writers, who in this case provide ample materials for a satisfactory judgment. We gather from Pliny, Pausanias. and Plutarch that he decorated with large paintings a portico of the Ceramicus of Athens, in which he represented the twelve gods on one side; Theseus between Democracy (Popular government) and Demos (the Populace) on another; and, on a third wall, the battle of Mantineia. From these authors we gather also that Euphranor was the first who, in painting, gave full expression to the dignity of heroes, and the first who gave a fine symmetry to the figure. Upon this subject (symmetry), and upon colouring, he generously imparted his experience to others by means of his writings. Euphranor was remarkable for the pliability of his talent; he executed as well and as readily a colossal statue or a small patera, a historical painting or the winding scroll of a border. He kept open school, in which Antidotus, Carmanides, and Leonidas of Anthedon, were brought up. A passage in Vitruvius would lead to the belief either that there was another Euphranor, an architect, who also wrote on symmetry, or that our Euphranor added to his other attainments those of an architect.—R. M.

EUPHRATES of Alexandria, a celebrated stoic philosopher of the second century. He counted Dio and Apollonius Tyanæus among his friends, and was by them introduced to the Emperor Vespasian. He was for some paltry reason bitterly inveighed against by Philostratus; but his true character is to be learned rather from Epictetus and the younger Pliny.—R. M., A.

EUPOLIS, one of the poets of the old comedy of Athens, is known to us only by the allusions of other writers and a few quotations. He lived from about 445 to about 405 b.c. The objects of his satire and the style of his invective seem to have been much the same as we are familiar with in the plays of his rival Aristophanes; indeed, they bitterly accused each other of plagiarism. He is described as graceful and imaginative, lofty and passionate; a conservative, fond of praising former policy and old statesmen, like Pericles, Solon, and Miltiades, whom sometimes he brought on the stage; hostile to "the demagogues" and to all innovation. Like Aristophanes he attacked Socrates; but the fulness of his hatred was poured out on Alcibiades and his friends. There is a foolish story that Alcibiades retaliated on him for the Baptæ (the Dippers)—in which he figured as the head of a profligate and impious freemasonry—by drowning him in the Sicilian expedition, and boasting over him that "now he was 'dipt' in turn."—G. R. L.

EUPOMPUS of Sicyon, a celebrated painter and art critic of ancient Greece, about 350 b.c. He had great influence upon the art of his time, and appears to have been the first to systematically set aside the ideal for the natural. He is the artist who, when consulted by the young sculptor Lysippus as to whom he should take as his guide, replied—"Let nature be your model, not an artist;" and he had a great following, for before his time only one school of painting was spoken of in Greece, which was called the Helladic, as distinguished from the Asiatic. Eupompus added a third, the Sicyonic, the others being thenceforth called the Attic and the Ionic. The maxim above quoted shows the character of the Sicyonic school. It must have exhibited somewhat of a pre-Raphaelite tendency, as compared with the generic style of Attic painting. Eupompus prevailed, and the Greeks never reverted to the severe taste of their fathers, as exemplified in the generic works of Polygnotus or Phidias, still so admirably illustrated in the renowned Elgin marbles in the British museum.—R. N. W.

EURIC or EVARIC, King of the Visigoths, assassinated and succeeded his brother, Theodoric II., in 466. His conquest of Spain, and the extension of his dominions northward in France to the Loire, attested his enterprise and abilities. Odoacer, on the throne of Rome, acknowledged his sovereignty beyond the Alps; more distant monarchs courted his alliance; and the Franks may ascribe their greatness, says Gibbon, to his death at a time when his son was an infant, and his adversary, Clovis, an ambitious and valiant youth.—W. B.

EURIPIDES, the third of the great tragic triad of ancient Greece, was a native of Attica, or, as some accounts have it, of the island of Salamis, where he was born in the year 480 b.c. His parentage, according to the current gossip of the comedians and other scandal-mongers, was low; his father, by their story, having been a petty trader, and his mother a green-grocer. But Philochorus, a learned Athenian, who flourished about 300 b.c., and wrote a life of the poet, says that his parents were persons of wealth and consideration; and this account harmonizes perfectly with all that we know of his character and habits from incidental sources. Theophrastus, for instance (Athenæus x., 424 f.), speaks of the young poet as having performed a part in a religious ceremonial, where only the sons of the first Athenian families were entitled to appear. We are told also by Athenæus (i. 3, a) that he possessed an immense library, which in those days required money. It is also known that Prodicus, who is mentioned among his instructors, as mentioned by Philostratus in his life of that sophist, was given to seek his scholars principally among the sons of the aristocratic and wealthy classes. With regard to his early studies and occupations, we find it mentioned that he distinguished himself as a wrestler, that he tried painting, but that finally he fixed on literature as his vocation; and, in addition to the composition of tragedies, studied rhetoric, science, philosophy, and morals under Prodicus, Anaxagoras, and other most famous teachers of the day. He was also very intimate with Socrates; though, as the philosopher was twelve years younger than the poet, he can scarcely have acted towards him in the capacity of a teacher strictly so-called. His first public exhibition as a composer of tragedies was, according to the life by Thomas Magister, in the year 455 b.c., when he was twenty-five years of age—a year remarkable as that in which Æschylus, the father of Greek tragedy, died; but he did not achieve a victory in the dramatic contests till the year 441. This date is attested by the Parian marble. The other ascertained dates of his life are taken from the arguments of the plays, which record the year when they were first represented, viz., the "Medea" in 431; the "Hippolytus" in 428; and the "Orestes" in 408 b.c. About this period, though the exact date is not mentioned, he expatriated himself, and settled in Macedonia, as Æschylus towards the end of his life had withdrawn to Sicily—a circumstance, no doubt, indicative of a certain want of harmony between himself and the Athenians, of which the causes are not difficult to trace. His studies of science and philosophy had brought him into connection with the intellectual movement party of the day; and accordingly, like his friend Socrates, he was honoured with a ceaseless merciless scourging from the master-hand of Aristophanes. That these satirical attacks, which contributed not a little to the death of the philosopher, should have passed, like an indifferent breath, over the head of the poet, is not to be supposed; especially as we know from the universal testimony of his biographers, that he was a man in whom some of the peculiarities of the poetic temperament were very prominent, and that there was something melancholic, fretful, and even misanthropic in his disposition. It is not improbable that the wantonness of democratic humour, or the fickleness of democratic favour, might have induced the sensitive poet of the "Iphigenia" to seek protection for a season under the courtly roof of Archelaus, king of Macedonia. Here, however, he was not destined to enjoy himself long. Being now an old man, he died, according to the witness of Eratosthenes, in the year 406 b.c., aged seventy-five—six years before the death of Socrates. He was buried in Pella. The Athenians requested that his body might be delivered up to the keeping of his native country; but Archelaus stoutly refused. The sorrow of his fellow-citizens was great; and Sophocles, his brother tragedian, publicly put on mourning, and caused his actors to appear without the usual decoration of coronals on the stage.

Such are the few certain facts that we have with regard to the life of this remarkable man. The critical estimate of his works is a more delicate matter, and offers considerable room for divergence of opinion and even contrariety of view. That his tragedies, in spite of the continued aspersions of Aristophanes, were very popular among the ancients, is undoubted. In Plutarch (Nicias c. 29) we find the well-known anecdote that many of the Athenians taken captive in the unfortunate Sicilian expedition, received their liberty for reciting certain verses of Euripides. Aristotle (Poet. 13) calls him the most tragic of the tragic poets; and Quintilian, book viii., while leaving undecided the vexed question whether he or Sophocles were the more distin-