an Ephesian who burnt the famous temple of Diana the same night that Alexander the Great was born. This burning, as some writers have observed, was not prevented or seen by the goddess of the place, who was then present at the labour of Olympias, and at the birth of the conqueror of Persia. Eratostratus did this villany merely to eternize his name by so uncommon an action.

EREBUS (Ερεβος, from ἐν, night), in Mythology, a term denoting darkness. According to Hesiod, Erebus was the son of Chaos and the night, and the father of the day. This was also the name of part of the inferi among the ancients: they had a peculiar expiation for those who were detained in Erebus.

Erebus was properly the gloomy region, and distinguished both from Tartarus the place of torment, and Elysium the region of bliss: according to the account given of it by Virgil, it forms the third grand division of the invisible world beyond the Styx, and comprehends several particular districts, as the limbus infantum, or the receptacle for infants; the limbus for those who have destroyed themselves; the fields of mourning, full of dark groves and woods, inhabited by those who died for love; and beyond these, an open campaign country for departed warriors.