ERNEST (Duke), son-in-law of Kaiser Konrad II.  He murders his feudal lord, and goes on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to expiate his crime.  The poem so called is a mixture of Homeric legends, Oriental myths, and pilgrims’ tales.  We have pygmies and cyclopses, genii and enchanters, fairies and dwarfs, monks and devotees.  After a world of hair-breadth escapes, the duke reaches the Holy Sepulchre, pays his vows, returns to Germany, and is pardoned.—­Henry Von Veldig (minnesinger), Duke Ernest (twelfth century).

ERNEST DE FRIDBERG, “the prisoner of the State.”  He was imprisoned in the dungeon of the Giant’s Mount fortress for fifteen years on a false charge of treason.  Ul’rica (his natural daughter by the countess Marie), dressed in the clothes of Herman, the deaf and dumb jailor-boy, gets access to the dungeon and contrives his escape; but he is retaken, and led back to the dungeon.  Being subsequently set at liberty, he marries the countess Marie (the mother of Ulrica).—­E.  Stirling, The Prisoner of State (1847.)

EROS, the manumitted slave of Antony the triumvir.  Antony made Eros swear that he would kill him if commanded by him so to do.  When in Egypt, Antony after the battle of Actium, fearing lest he should fall into the hands of Octavius Caesar, ordered Eros to keep his promise.  Eros drew his sword, but thrust it into his own side, and fell dead at the feet of Antony.  “O noble Eros,” cried Antony, “I thank thee for teaching me how to die!”—­Plutarch.

[Illustration] Eros is introduced in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, and in Dryden’s All for Love or the World Well Lost.

(Eros is the Greek name of Cupid, and hence amorous poetry is called Erotic.)

EROS’TRATOS (in Latin EROSTRATUS), the incendiary who set fire to the temple of Diana of Ephesus, that his name might be perpetuated.  An edict was published, prohibiting any mention of the name, but the edict was wholly ineffective.

[Illustration] Charles V., wishing to be shown over the Pantheon [All Saints] of Rome, was taken to the top by a Roman knight.  At parting, the knight told the emperor that he felt an almost irresistible desire to push his majesty down from the top of the building, “in order to immortalize his name.”  Unlike Erostratos, the name of this knight has not transpired.  ERO’TA, a very beautiful but most imperious princess, passionately beloved by Philander, Prince of Cyprus.—­Beaumont and Fletcher, The Laws of Candy (1647).

ERRA-PATER, an almanac, an almanac-maker, an astrologer.  Samuel Butler calls Lilly, the almanac-maker, an Erra-Pater, which we are told was the name of a famous Jewish astrologer.

  His only Bible was an Erra-Pater.

  Phin.  Fletcher, The Purple Island, vii. (1633).

  “What’s here?  Erra-Pater or a bearded sibyl”
  [the person was Foresight].

Congreve, Love for Love, iv. (1695).