There are treatises on Eumenius by B. Kilian (Würzburg, 1869), S. Brandt (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1882), and H. Sachs (Halle, 1885); see also Gaston Boissier, “Les Rhéteurs gaulois du IVe siècle,” in Journal des savants (1884).
EUMOLPUS (“sweet singer”), in Greek mythology, son of Poseidon and Chione, the daughter of Boreas, legendary priest, poet and warrior. He finally settled in Thrace, where he became king. During a war between the Eleusinians and Athenians under Erechtheus, he went to the assistance of the former, who on a previous occasion had shown him hospitality, but was slain with his two sons, Phorbas and Immaradus. According to another tradition, Erechtheus and Immaradus lost their lives; the Eleusinians then submitted to Athens on condition that they alone should celebrate the mysteries, and that Eumolpus and the daughters of Celeus should perform the sacrifices. It is asserted by others that Eumolpus with a colony of Thracians laid claim to Attica as having belonged to his father Poseidon (Isocrates, Panath. 193). The Eleusinian mysteries were generally considered to have been founded by Eumolpus, the first priest of Demeter, but, according to some, by Eumolpus the son of Musaeus, Eumolpus the Thracian being the father of Keryx, the ancestor of the priestly family of the Kerykes. As priest, Eumolpus purifies Heracles from the murder of the Centaurs; as musician, he instructs him (as well as Linus and Orpheus) in playing the lyre, and is the reputed inventor of vocal accompaniments to the flute. Suidas reckons him one of the early poets and a writer of hymns of consecration, and Diodorus Siculus quotes a line from a Dionysiac hymn attributed to Eumolpus. He is also said to have been the first priest of Dionysus, and to have introduced the cultivation of the vine and fruit trees (Pliny, Nat. Hist. vii. 199). His grave was shown at Athens and Eleusis. His descendants, called Eumolpidae, together with the Kerykes, were the hereditary guardians of the mysteries (q.v.).
See Apollodorus ii. 5, iii. 15; Pausanias i. 38. 2; Hyginus, Fab. 273; Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 476; Strabo vii. p. 321; Diod. Sic. i. 11; article “Eumolpidai,” by J.A. Hild in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités.
EUNAPIUS, Greek sophist and historian, was born at Sardis, A.D. 347. In his native city he studied under his relative the sophist Chrysanthius, and while still a youth went to Athens, where he became a favourite pupil of Proaeresius the rhetorician. He possessed a considerable knowledge of medicine. In his later years he seems to have resided at Athens, teaching rhetoric. Initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, he was admitted into the college of the Eumolpidae and became hierophant. There is evidence that he was still living in the reign of the younger Theodosius (408-450). Eunapius was the author of two works, one entitled Lives of the Sophists (Βίοι φιλοσόφων καὶ σοφιστῶν), and the other consisting of a continuation of the history of Dexippus (q.v.). The former work is still extant; of the latter only excerpts remain, but the facts are largely incorporated in the work of Zosimus. It embraced the history of events from A.D. 270-404. The Lives of the Sophists, which deals chiefly with the contemporaries of the author, is valuable as the only source for the history of the neo-Platonism of that period. The style of both works is bad, and they are marked by a spirit of bitter hostility to Christianity. Photius (cod. 77) had before him a “new edition” of the history in which the passages most offensive to the Christians were omitted.
Edition of the Lives by J.F. Boissonade (1822), with notes by D. Wyttenbach; history fragments in C.W. Müller, Fragmenta Hist. Graecorum, iv.; V. Cousin, Fragments philosophiques (1865).
EUNOMIUS (d. c. 393), one of the leaders of the extreme or “anomoean” Arians, who are sometimes accordingly called Eunomians, was born at Dacora in Cappadocia early in the 4th century. He studied theology at Alexandria under Aetius, and afterwards came under the influence of Eudoxius of Antioch, where he was ordained deacon. On the recommendation of Eudoxius he was appointed bishop of Cyzicus in 360. Here his free utterance of extreme Arian views led to popular complaints, and Eudoxius was compelled, by command of the emperor, Constantius II., to depose him from the bishopric within a year of his elevation to it. During the reigns of Julian and Jovian, Eunomius resided in Constantinople in close intercourse with Aetius, consolidating an heretical party and consecrating schismatical bishops. He then went to live at Chalcedon, whence in 367 he was banished to Mauretania for harbouring the rebel Procopius. He was recalled, however, before he reached his destination. In 383 the emperor Theodosius, who had demanded a declaration of faith from all party leaders, punished Eunomius for continuing to teach his distinctive doctrines, by banishing him to Halmyris in Moesia. He afterwards resided at Chalcedon and at Caesarea in Cappadocia, from which he was expelled by the inhabitants for writing against their bishop Basil. His last days were spent at Dacora his birthplace, where he died about 393. His writings were held in high reputation by his party, and their influence was so much dreaded by the orthodox, that more than one imperial edict was issued for their destruction (Cod. Theod. xvi. 34). Consequently his commentary on the epistle to the Romans, mentioned by the historian Socrates, and his epistles, mentioned by Philostorgius and Photius, are no longer extant. His first apologetical work (Ἀπολογητικός), written probably about 360 or 365, has been entirely recovered from the celebrated refutation of it by Basil, and may be found in J.A. Fabricius, Bibl. Gr. viii. pp. 262-305. A second apology, written before 379 (Ὑπὲρ ἀπολογίας ἀπολογία), exists only in the quotations given from it in a refutation by Gregory of Nyssa. The exposition of faith (Ἔκθεσις τῆς πίστεως), called forth by the demand of Theodosius, is still extant, and has been edited by Valesius in his notes to Socrates, and by Ch. H.G. Rettberg in his Marcelliana.