EUONYMUS, in botany, a genus of deciduous or evergreen shrubs or small trees, widely distributed in the north temperate zone, and represented in Britain by E. europaeus, the spindle tree, so called from its hard tough wood being formerly used for spindles. It is a shrub or small tree growing in copses or hedges, with a grey smooth bark, four-angled green twigs, opposite leaves and loose clusters of small greenish-white flowers. The ripe fruit is a pale crimson colour and splits into four lobes exposing the bright orange-coloured seed. E. japonicus is a hardy evergreen shrub, often variegated and well known in gardens. The Greek name εὐώνυμος, of good name, lucky, is probably a euphemism; the flowering was said to foretell plague.
EUPALINUS, of Megara, a Greek architect, who constructed for the tyrant Polycrates of Samos a remarkable tunnel to bring water to the city, passing under a hill. This aqueduct still exists, and is one of the most remarkable constructions in Greece (see [Aqueduct]: Greek).
EUPATORIA (Russ. Evpatoria; also known as Kozlov and to the Turks as Gezlev), a seaport of Russia, in the government of Taurida, on the W. coast of the Crimea, 20 m. N.W. of Simferopol, on a sandy promontory on the north of Kalamita Bay, in 45° 12′ N. and 33° 40′ E. Pop. (1871) 8294; (1897) 17,915. This number includes many Jews, the Karaite sect having here their principal synagogue. Here too resides the spiritual head (gakhan) of the sect. Of its numerous ecclesiastical buildings three are of interest—the synagogue of the Karaite Jews; one of the mosques, which has fourteen cupolas and is built (1552) after the plan of St Sophia in Constantinople; and the Greek Catholic cathedral (1898). The port or rather roadstead has a sandy bottom, and is exposed to violent storms from the N.E. The trade is principally in cereals, skins, cow-hair, felt, tallow and salt. Eupatoria has some repute as a sea-bathing resort.
According to some authorities it was near this spot that a military post, Eupatorium, was established in the 1st century A.D. by Diophantus, the general of Mithradates the Great, king of Pontus. Towards the end of the 15th century the Turks built the fortress of Gezleveh on the present site, and it became the capital of a khanate. It was occupied by the Russians under Marshal Münnich in 1736, and in 1771 by Prince Dolgorukov. Its annexation to Russia took place in 1783. In 1854 the Anglo-French troops were landed in the neighbourhood of Eupatoria, and in February 1855 the town was occupied by the Turkish forces.
EUPATRIDAE (Gr. εὖ, well; πατήρ, father, i.e. “Sons of noble fathers”), the ancient nobility of Attica. Tradition ascribes to Theseus, whom it also regards as the author of the union (synoecism) of Attica round Athens as a political centre, the division of the Attic population into three classes, Eupatridae, Geomori and Demiurgi. The lexicographers mention as characteristics of the Eupatridae that they are the autochthonous population, the dwellers in the city, the descendants of the royal stock. It is probable that after the time of the synoecism the nobles who had hitherto governed the various independent communities were obliged to reside in Athens, now the seat of government; and at the beginning of Athenian history the noble clans form a class which has the monopoly of political privilege. It is possible that in very early times the Eupatridae were the only full citizens of Athens; for the evidence suggests that they alone belonged to the phratries, and the division into phratries must have covered the whole citizen body. It is indeed just possible that the term may originally have signified “true member of a clan,” since membership of a phratry was a characteristic of each clan (γένος). It is not probable that the Eupatrid families were all autochthonous, even in the loose sense of that term. Some had no doubt immigrated to Attica when the rest had long been settled there. Traces of this union of immigrants with older inhabitants have been detected in the combination of Zeus Herkeios with Apollo Patroös as the ancient gods of the phratry.
The exact relation of the Eupatridae to the other two classes has been a matter of dispute. It seems probable that the Eupatridae were the governing class, the only recognized nobility, the Geomori the country inhabitants of all ranks, and the Demiurgi the commercial and artisan population. The division attributed to Theseus is always spoken of by ancient authorities as a division of the entire population; but Busolt has recently maintained the view that the three classes represent three elements in the Attic nobility, namely, the city nobility, the landed nobility and the commercial nobility, and exclude altogether the mass of the population. At any rate it seems certain from the little we know of the early constitutional history of Athens, that the Eupatridae represent the only nobility that had any political recognition in early times. The political history of the Eupatridae is that of a gradual curtailment of privilege. They were at the height of their power in the period during the limitation of the monarchy. They alone held the two offices, those of polemarch and archon, which were instituted during the 8th century B.C. to restrict the powers of the kings. In 712 B.C. the office of king (βασιλεύς) was itself thrown open to all Eupatrids (see [Archon]). They thus had the entire control of the administration, and were the sole dispensers of justice in the state. At this latter privilege, which perhaps formed the strongest bulwark of the authority of the Eupatridae, a severe blow was struck (c. 621 B.C.) by the publication of a criminal code by Draco (q.v.), which was followed by the more detailed and permanent code of Solon (c. 594 B.C.), who further threw open the highest offices to any citizen possessed of a certain amount of landed property (see [Solon]), thus putting the claims of the Eupatridae to political influence on a level with those of the wealthier citizens of all classes. The most highly coveted office at this time was not that of Βασιλεύς, which, like that of the rex sacrorum in Rome, had been stripped of all save its religious authority, but that of the Archon; soon after the legislation of Solon repeated struggles for this office between the Eupatridae and leading members of the other two classes resulted in a temporary change. Ten archons[1] were appointed, five of whom were to be Eupatridae, three Agroeci (i.e. Geomori), and two Demiurgi (Arist. Ath. Pol. xiii. 2). This arrangement, though short-lived, is significant of the decay of the political influence of the Eupatridae, and it is not likely that they recovered, even in practice, any real control of the government. By the middle of the 6th century the political influence of birth was at an end.
The name Eupatridae survived in historical times, but the Eupatridae were then excluded from the cult of the “Semnae” at Athens, and also held the hereditary office of “expounder of the law” (ἐξηγητής) in connexion with purification from the guilt of murder. The combination of these two characteristics suggests some connexion with the legend of Orestes. Again, Isocrates (xvi. 25) says of Alcibiades that his grandfather was a Eupatrid and his grandmother an Alcmaeonid, which suggests that in the 5th century the Eupatrids were a single clan, like the Alcmaeonids, and that the name had acquired a new signification. A pursuit of these two suggestions has established the probability that this “Eupatrid” clan traced its origin to Orestes, and derived its name from the hero, who was above all a benefactor of his father. The word will well bear this sense in the two passages in which Sophocles (Electra, 162, 859) applies it to Orestes; and it is likely enough that after the disappearance of the old Eupatridae as a political corporation, the name was adopted in a different sense, but not without a claim to the distinction inherent in the older sense, by one of the oldest of the clans.