EUCRATIDES

eucratides, king of bactria (c. 175-129 b.c.), came to the throne by a rebellion against the dynasty of euthydemus, whose son demetrius had conquered western india. his authority was challenged by a great many other pretenders and greek dynasts in sogdiana, aria (herat), drangiana (sijistan), &c., whose names--pantaleon, agathocles, antimachus, antalcidas "the victorious" ([greek: nikephoros]), plato, whose unique coin is dated from the year 147 of the seleucid era (= 166 b.c.), and others--are known only from coins with greek and indian legends. in the west the parthian king mithradates i. began to enlarge his kingdom and attacked eucratides; he succeeded in conquering two provinces between bactria and parthia, called by strabo "the country of aspiones and turiua," two iranian names. but the principal opponent of eucratides was demetrius (q.v.) of india, who attacked him with a large army "of 300,000 men"; eucratides fled with 300 men into a fortress and was besieged. but at last he beat demetrius, and conquered a great part of western india. according to apollodorus of artemita, the historian of the parthians, he ruled over 1000 towns (strabo xv. 686; transferred to diodotus of bactria in justin 41, 4. 6); and the extent of his kingdom over bactria, sogdiana (bokhara), drangiana (sijistan), kabul and the western punjab is confirmed by numerous coins. on these coins, which bear greek and indian legends (in kharoshti writing, cf. bactria), he is called "the great king eucratides." on one his portrait and name are associated on the reverse with those of heliocles and laodice; heliocles was probably his son, and the coin may have been struck to celebrate his marriage with laodice, who seems to have been a seleucid princess. in bactria eucratides founded a greek city, eucratideia (strabo xi. 516, ptolem. vi. 11. 8). on his return from india eucratides was (about 150 b.c.) murdered by his son, whom he had made co-regent (justin 41, 6). this son is probably the heliocles just mentioned, who on his coins calls himself "the just" ([greek: basileos heliokleous dikaiou]). in his time the graeco-bactrian kingdom lost the countries north of the hindu kush. mongolian tribes, the yue-chi of the chinese, called by the greeks scythians, by the indians saka, among which the tochari are the most conspicuous, invaded sogdiana in 159 b.c. and conquered bactria in 139. meanwhile the parthian kings mithradates i. and phraates ii. conquered the provinces in the west of the hindu kush (justin 41, 6. 8); for a short time mithradates i. extended his dominion to the borders of india (diod. 33. 18, orosius v. 4. 16). when antiochus vii. sidetes tried once more to restore the seleucid dominion in 130, phraates allied himself with the scythians (justin 42, 1. 1); but after his decisive victory in 129 he was attacked by them and fell in the battle. the changed state of affairs is shown by the numerous coins of heliocles; while his predecessors maintained the attic standard, which had been dominant throughout the greek east, he on his later coins passes over to a native silver standard, and his bronze coins became quite barbarous. besides his coins we possess coins of many other greek kings of these times, most of whom take the epithet of "invincible" ([greek: aniketos]) and "saviour" ([greek: soter]). they are records of a desperate struggle of the greeks to maintain their nationality and independence in the far east; one usurper after the other rose to fight for the rescue of the kingdom. but these internal wars only accelerated the destruction; about 120 b.c. almost the whole of eastern iran was in the hands either of a parthian dynasty or of the mongol invaders, who are now called indo-scythians. only in the kabul valley and western india the greeks maintained themselves about two generations longer (see menander). (ed. m.) eudaemonism (from gr. [greek: eudaimonia], literally the state of being under the protection of a benign spirit, a "good genius"), in ethics, the name applied to theories of morality which find the chief good of man in some form of happiness. the term eudaemonia has been taken in a large number of senses, with consequent variations in the meaning of eudaemonism. to plato the "happiness" of all the members of a state, each according to his own capacity, was the final end of political development. aristotle, as usual, adopted "eudaemonia" as the term which in popular language most nearly represented his idea and made it the keyword of his ethical doctrine. none the less he greatly expanded the content of the word, until the popular idea was practically lost: if a man is to be called [greek: eudaimon], he must have all his powers performing their functions freely in accordance with virtue, as well as a reasonable degree of material well-being; the highest conceivable good of man is the life of contemplation. aristotle further held that the good man in achieving virtue must experience pleasure ([greek: hedone]), which is, therefore, not the same as, but the sequel to or concomitant of eudaemonia. subsequent thinkers have to a greater or less degree identified the two ideas, and much confusion has resulted. among the ancients the epicureans expressed all eudaemonia in terms of pleasure. on the other hand attempts have been made to separate hedonism, as the search for a continuous series of physical pleasures, from eudaemonism, a condition of enduring mental satisfaction. such a distinction involves the assumptions that bodily pleasures are generically different from mental ones, and that there is in practice a clearly marked dividing line,--both of which hypotheses are frequently denied. among modern writers, james seth (_ethical princ._, 1894) resumes aristotle's position, and places eudaemonism as the mean between the ethics of sensibility (hedonism) and the ethics of rationality, each of which overlooks the complex character of human life. the fundamental difficulty which confronts those who would distinguish between pleasure and eudaemonia is that all pleasure is ultimately a mental phenomenon, whether it be roused by food, music, doing a moral action or committing a theft. there is a marked disposition on the part of critics of hedonism to confuse "pleasure" with animal pleasure or "passion,"--in other words, with a pleasure phenomenon in which the predominant feature is entire lack of self-control, whereas the word "pleasure" has strictly no such connotation. pleasure is strictly nothing more than the state of being pleased, and hedonism the theory that man's chief good consists in acting in such a way as to bring about a continuous succession of such states. that they are in some cases produced by physical or sensory stimuli does not constitute them irrational, and it is purely arbitrary to confine the word pleasure to those cases in which such stimuli are the proximate causes. the value of the term eudaemonism as an antithesis to hedonism is thus very questionable. eudocia augusta (c. 401-c. 460), the wife of theodosius ii., east roman emperor, was born in athens, the daughter of the sophist leontius, from whom she received a thorough training in literature and rhetoric. deprived of her small patrimony by her brothers' rapacity, she betook herself to constantinople to obtain redress at court. her accomplishments attracted theodosius' sister pulcheria, who took her into her retinue and destined her to be the emperor's wife. after receiving baptism and discarding her former name, athenais, for that of aelia licinia eudocia, she was married to theodosius in 421; two years later, after the birth of a daughter, she received the title augusta. the new empress repaid her brothers by making them consuls and prefects, and used her large influence at court to protect pagans and jews. in 438-439 she made an ostentatious pilgrimage to jerusalem, whence she brought back several precious relics; during her stay at antioch she harangued the senate in hellenic style and distributed funds for the repair of its buildings. on her return her position was undermined by the jealousy of pulcheria and the groundless suspicion of an intrigue with her protege paulinus, the master of the offices. after the latter's execution (440) she retired to jerusalem, where she was made responsible for the murder of an officer sent to kill two of her followers and stripped of her revenues. nevertheless she retained great influence; although involved in the revolt of the syrian monophysites (453), she was ultimately reconciled to pulcheria and readmitted into the orthodox church. she died at jerusalem about 460, after devoting her last years to literature. among her works were a paraphrase of the octateuch in hexameters, a paraphrase of the books of daniel and zechariah, a poem on st cyprian and on her husband's persian victories. a _passion history_ compiled out of homeric verses, which zonaras attributed to eudocia, is perhaps of different authorship. see w. wiegand, _eudokia_ (worms, 1871); f. gregorovius, _athenais_ (leipzig, 1892); c. diehl, _figures byzantines_ (paris, 1906), pp. 25-49; also theodosius. on her works cf. a. ludwich, _eudociae augustae carminum reliquiae_ (koenigsberg, 1893). eudocia macrembolitissa (c. 1021-1096), daughter of john macrembolites, was the wife of the byzantine emperor constantine x., and after his death (1067) of romanus iv. she had sworn to her first husband on his death-bed not to marry again, and had even imprisoned and exiled romanus, who was suspected of aspiring to the throne. perceiving, however, that she was not able unaided to avert the invasions which threatened the eastern frontier of the empire, she revoked her oath, married romanus, and with his assistance dispelled the impending danger. she did not live very happily with her new husband, who was warlike and self-willed, and when he was taken prisoner by the turks (1071) she was compelled to vacate the throne in favour of her son michael and retire to a convent, where she died. the dictionary of mythology entitled [greek: ionia] ("collection of violets"), which formerly used to be ascribed to her, was not composed till 1543 (constantine palaeokappa). see j. flach, _die kaiserin eudokia makrembolitissa_ (tuebingen, 1876); p. pulch, _de eudociae quod fertur violario_ (strassburg, 1880); and in _hermes_, xvii. (1882), p. 177 ff. eudoxia lopukhina (1669-1731), tsaritsa, first consort of peter the great, was the daughter of the boyarin theodore lopukhin. peter, then a youth of seventeen, married her on the 27th of january 1689 at the command of his mother, who hoped to wean him from the wicked ways of the german suburb of moscow by wedding him betimes to a lady who was as pious as she was beautiful. the marriage was in every way unfortunate. accustomed from her infancy to the monastic seclusion of the _terem_, or women's quarter, eudoxia's mental horizon did not extend much beyond her embroidery-frame or her illuminated service-book. from the first her society bored peter unspeakably, and after the birth of their second, short-lived son alexander, he practically deserted her. in 1698 she was unceremoniously sent off to the pokrovsky monastery at suzdal for refusing to consent to a divorce, though it was not till june 1699 that she disappeared from the world beneath the hood of sister elena. in the monastery, however, she was held in high honour by the archimandrite; the nuns persisted in regarding her as the lawful empress; and she was permitted an extraordinary degree of latitude, unknown to peter, who dragged her from her enforced retreat in 1718 on a charge of adultery. as the evidence was collected by peter's creatures, it is very doubtful whether eudoxia was guilty, though she was compelled to make a public confession. she was then divorced and consigned to the remote monastery of ladoga. here she remained for ten years till the accession of her grandson, peter ii., when the reactionaries proposed to appoint her regent. she was escorted with great ceremony to moscow in 1728 and exhibited to the people attired in the splendid, old-fashioned robes of a tsaritsa; but years of rigid seclusion had dulled her wits, and her best friends soon convinced themselves that a convent was a much more suitable place for her than a throne. an allowance of 60,000 roubles a year was accordingly assigned to her, and she disappeared again in a monastery at moscow, where she died in 1731. see robert nisbet bain, _pupils of peter the great_ (london, 1895), chaps. ii. and iv.; and _the first romanovs_ (london, 1905), chaps. viii. and xii. (r. n. b.)