EPI

epi, the french architectural term for a light finial, generally of metal, but sometimes of terra-cotta, forming the termination of a spire or the angle of a roof. epicene (from the gr. [greek: epikoinos], common), a term in greek and latin grammar denoting nouns which, possessing but one gender, are used to describe animals of either sex. in english grammar there are no true epicene nouns, but the term is sometimes used instead of _common gender_. in figurative and literary language, epicene is an adjective applied to persons having the characteristics of both sexes, and hence is occasionally used as a synonym of "effeminate." epicharmus (c. 540-450 b.c.), greek comic poet, was born in the island of cos. early in life he went to megara in sicily, and after its destruction by gelo (484) removed to syracuse, where he spent the rest of his life at the court of hiero, and died at the age of ninety or (according to a statement in lucian, _macrobii_, 25) ninety-seven. a brazen statue was set up in his honour by the inhabitants, for which theocritus composed an inscription (_epigr._ 17). epicharmus was the chief representative of the sicilian or dorian comedy. of his works 35 titles and a few fragments have survived. in the city of tyrants it would have been dangerous to present comedies like those of the athenian stage, in which attacks were made upon the authorities. accordingly, the comedies of epicharmus are of two kinds, neither of them calculated to give offence to the ruler. they are either mythological travesties (resembling the satyric drama of athens) or character comedies. to the first class belong the _busiris_, in which heracles is represented as a voracious glutton; the _marriage of hebe_, remarkable for a lengthy list of dainties. the second class dealt with different classes of the population (the sailor, the prophet, the boor, the parasite). some of the plays seem to have bordered on the political, as _the plunderings_, describing the devastation of sicily in the time of the poet. a short fragment has been discovered (in the rainer papyri) from the [greek: odysseus automolos], which told how odysseus got inside troy in the disguise of a beggar and obtained valuable information. another feature of his works was the large number of excellent sentiments expressed in a brief proverbial form; the pythagoreans claimed him as a member of their school, who had forsaken the study of philosophy for the writing of comedy. plato (_theaetetus_, 152 e) puts him at the head of the masters of comedy, coupling his name with homer and, according to a remark in diogenes laertius, plato was indebted to epicharmus for much of his philosophy. ennius called his didactic poem on natural philosophy _epicharmus_ after the comic poet. the metres employed by epicharmus were iambic trimeter, and especially trochaic and anapaestic tetrameter. the plot of the plays was simple, the action lively and rapid; hence they were classed among the _fabulae motoriae_ (stirring, bustling), as indicated in the well-known line of horace (_epistles_, ii. 1. 58): "plautus ad exemplar siculi properare epicharmi." epicharmus is the subject of articles in suidas and diogenes laertius (viii. 3). see a.o. lorenz, _leben und schriften des koers e._ (with account of the doric drama and fragments, 1864); j. girard, _etudes sur la poesie grecque_ (1884); kaibel in pauly-wissowa's _realencyclopadie_, according to whom epicharmus was a siceliot; for the papyrus fragment, blass in _jahrbucher fur philologie_, cxxxix., 1889.