Chapter Ensilage to Episemon of E by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Ephebi Youths between the age of eighteen and twenty were so called at Athens. (Greek, arrived at puberty.)

Ephesian A jovial companion; a thief; a roysterer. A pun on the verb to pheese — A-pheeze-ian. Pheeze is to flatter.

"It is thine host, thine Ephesian, calls."
Shakespeare: Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 5.

Ephesian Letters Magic characters. The Ephesians were greatly addicted to magic. Magic characters were marked on the crown, cincture, and feet of Diana; and, at the preaching of Paul, many which used curious [magical] books burnt them. (Acts xix. 19.)
   The Ephesian poet. Hipponax, born at Ephesus in the sixth century B.C.

Ephialtes (4 syl.). A giant who was deprived of his left eye by Apollo, and of his right eye by Hercules.

Ephialtes (4 syl.). The nightmare. (Greek, ephialtes, an incubus; from epihallomai, to leap upon.)

"Feverish symptoms all, with which those who are haunted by the night-hag, whom the learned call Ephialtes, are but too well acquainted." - Sir W Scott: The Antiquary, chap. x.

Ephori or Ephors. Spartan magistrates, five in number, annually elected from the ruling caste. They exercised control even over the kings and senate.

Epic Father of epic poetry. Homer (about 950 B.C.), author of the Iliad and Odyssey.
    Celebrated epics are the Iliad, Odyssey, Æneid, Paradise Lost.
   The great Puritan epic. Milton's Paradise Lost.

"Speaking of M. Doré's performances as an illustrator of the great Puritan epic." - The Times.

Epicure (3 syl.). A sensualist; one addicted to good eating and drinking. So called from Epicuros (q.v.).
   Sir Epicure. A worldly sensualist in The Alchemist, by Ben Jonson. His surname is "Mammon."

Epicurean Carnal; sensual; pertaining to good eating and drinking. (See Epicuros.)
   T. Moore has a prose romance entitled The Epicurean.

"Epicurean cooks
Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite."
Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 1.

Epicuros (Latin form, Epicurus.) The Greek philosopher who founded the Epicurean school. His axiom was that "happiness or enjoyment is the summum bonum of life." His disciples corrupted his doctrine into "Good living is the object we should all seek," or, according to the drinking song, "Who leads a good life is sure to live well."

"Blest be the day I `scaped the wrangling crew,
From Pyrrho's [q.v.] maze and Epicurus' sty."
Beattie: Minstrel.

   The Epicurus of China. Tao-tse, who commenced the search for the "elixir of life." Several of the Chinese emperors lost their lives by drinking his "potion of immortality" (B.C. 540).

Epi-demic is from the two Greek words epi-demos (upon the people), a disease that attacks a number of people at once, either from bad air, bad drainage, or other similar cause.

Epigram A short pointed or antithetical poem, or any short composition happily or antithetically expressed.

Epilepsy was called by the Romans the Comitial or Congress sickness (morbus comitialis), because the polling for the comitia centuriata was null and void if any voter was seized with epilepsy while the votes were being taken.

Epimenides (5 syl.). A philosopher of Crete, who fell asleep in a cave when a boy, and did not wake again for fifty-seven years, when he found himself endowed with miraculous wisdom. (Pliny: Natural History.) (See Rip Van Winkle.)

"Like Epimenides, I have been sleeping in a cave; and, waking, see those whom I left children are bearded men." - Bulwer Lytton (Lord Lytton).

Epiphany The time of appearance, meaning the period when the