in ancient poetry, a poem rehearsed during the funeral ceremonies of persons of distinction.

EPICHARMUS, a celebrated poet of the old comedy, the son of Helotbares, a native of Cos, but who having been carried into Sicily at the age of three months, is generally known as a Sicilian, the name of his adopted country having prevailed over that of the country of his birth. He was a pupil of Pythagoras; for there seems abundant proof that Epicharmus the Pythagorean and Epicharmus the father of the old comedy were one and the same person. He was the author of many comedies, written in trochaic tetrameters, which he began to exhibit about the year 500 B.C., and continued down to the reign of Hiero, 477 B.C. Plautus is said to have imitated him (Hor. Ep. ii. i, 57), and Ennius translated one of his moral works. He used to say that the principal requisite in a philosopher was not to believe rashly. (Cic. De Petia, Cons. c. 10.)

Epicharmus is much less known and esteemed than his peculiar style of writing and dramatic skill deserve. The subjects of his plays were mostly mythological, being parodies or travesties of mythology, nearly in the style of the satirical drama of Athens. Thus, in the comedy of Basins, Hercules was represented in a most ludicrous light as a voracious glutton; and he seems again to have been exhibited in the same character in the Marriage of Hebe. It is supposed that the figures on a vase now preserved in the British Museum, and which was found at Bari in the kingdom of Naples, were intended to represent the characters in the play of Epicharmus entitled Vulcan, or the Revelers. (See Millin, Galerie Mythologique, xiii. 48, for the figures.) The play began, as we are told, with Vulcan claiming his mother Juno by magical charms to a seat, from which he only released her after long entreaties. Vulcan being, in consequence of this act, ill treated by his parents, entirely deserted Olympus, until Bacchus, having made him drunk, placed him on an ass, and thus brought him in jolly merriment back to Olympus. But Epicharmus, like Aristophanes, sometimes handled political subjects. Thus, according to Hemsterhuis (ad Pollux, ix. 4, 26), the piece called Αγροπόλις, or the Plunderings, which described the devastation of Sicily in his time, had a political meaning; and this was perhaps also the case with "The Islands." The style of his plays was not less various than his subjects; he passed from rude buffoonery to a more serious strain, introducing maxims and moral sentences, together with precepts of the Pythagorean philosophy. That the dramatic style of Epicharmus was perfect in its kind is proved by the great admiration in which it was held by the ancients, particularly by Plato.

EPICHIROTONIA, amongst the Athenians. It was ordained by Solon, that once every year the laws should be carefully revised and examined; and that if any of them were found unsuitable to the actual state of affairs, they should be repealed. This was called συνεχεία τῶν νόμων, from the manner of giving their suffrages by holding up their hands. (See a further account of this custom in Potter, Archæol. Græc. tom. i. p. 242.)