sga E R B 
gui filing doftrine was, “ that the church had no right to 
difcipline, no regular power to excommunicate, exclude, 
cenfure, abfolve,-decree, or profecute,”. all fuch power 
being in the civil magistrate-. 
ER'ATO, one of the mufes, who prefided over lyric, 
tender, and amorous, poetry. She is reprefented as crown¬ 
ed with rofes and myrtle, holding a lyre in her hand. 
She appears with a thoughtful and fometimes with a gay 
and animated look. She was invoked by lovers, efpe- 
cially in the month of April, which, among the Romans, 
was more particularly devoted to love. Apollodorus. 
ERATOS'THENES, an eminent Greek philcfopher, 
mathematician, and ehronologid, born at Cyrene, in 
the fecond year of the 126th olympiad, or 275 before 
Chrift. So didinguilhed was he for his proficiency in 
different branches of erudition, that lie acquired the fur. 
name of or victorious in five contefts, which, 
tinder an allufion to the five prizes of the Olympic games, 
was meant to defignate his fuccefs and fuperiority in all 
kinds of literary purfuits. On the invitation of Ptolemy 
Euergetes, he quitted Athens, and went to Egypt, in order 
to undertake the office of librarian to the celebrated library 
at Alexandria. In that fituation he continued under the 
reigns of three fucceffive princes, difcharging the trull: 
committed to him with great applaufe, and acquiring a 
high reputation for fcience and learning by the many 
books which he wrote, and the difcoveries which he an¬ 
nounced. He was the fir ft who found out a method of 
meafuring the periphery of the earth ; and he alfo ob- 
ierved the obliquity of the ecliptic. He wrote an epiffle 
to king Ptolemy, in which he folved tire problem of the 
duplication of the cube ; and lie invented a convenient 
method of difcovering the primary numbers, that is, fuch 
as have no common meafure of divifion interfe, excepting 
unity, which has been called the fieve of Eratodhenes. 
He wrote numerous treatifes in grammar, adronomy, hif- 
tory, and geography, together with dialogue's on the phi- 
lofophical fedls, and poems. Nothing more than frag¬ 
ments, however, of his different pieces have reached our 
times, fome of which were publifiied at Oxford in 1672, 
with brief annotations, in 8vo. The mod valuable of his 
remains, which is not in that little collection, is his Cata¬ 
logue of the Kings of Thebes, in Egypt, from Mefies, 
who firft peopled Egypt after the Deluge, to the Time 
of the Trojan War. It is one of the mod venerable and 
authentic monuments of antiquity now extant, and contains 
a feries of thirty-eight kings, reigning in a direft line of 
fucceffion, taken not only from the records in the Alexan¬ 
drian library, but the facred archives in Diofpolis, or 
Thebes, and mod probably drawn up to fupply the de¬ 
fects, and correCt the errors, of Manetho’s Dynadies. By 
fome of ourabled chronologers it has been conddered and 
made ufe of as an authority of the fird importance in fet r 
tling the Egyptian chronology. Eratodhenes died at the 
advanced age of eighty-one. The fragments of his works 
which are noticed above to have been publifhed at Ox¬ 
ford, were alfo printed in Uranologium of Petavius, at 
Paris, in 1630, and afterwards at Amderdam, in 1703. 
ERATOS'TRATUS, an Ephefian who burnt the fa¬ 
mous temple of Diana the fame night that Alexander the 
Great was born. Eratodratus committed this a& of vil¬ 
lainy merely to eternize his name. Plutarch. 
ERAVIN'SKOI, a fortrefs of Ruflia, in the govern¬ 
ment of Irkutfch : eighty miles fouth-fouth ead of Bar- 
guzinfk. Lat. 52. 32. N. Ion. 129. E. Ferro. 
ER'BACH, a town of Germany, in the circle of the 
Lower Rhine, and electorate of Mentz, on the Rhine: 
eleven miles wed of Mentz. 
ER'BACH, a town of Germany, in the circle of Fran¬ 
conia, and capital of a county of the fame name : twenty 
miles north-ead of Manheim, and fixteen north-north-ead 
of Heidelberg. 
ER'BACH (County of), a principality of Germany, in 
the circle of Franconia, about feven leagues long, and fix 
wide : the foil is mountainous, but produces enough to 
ERE 
fupply the wants of the inhabitants. The inhabitants 
make a large quantity of pot-afli, and feed a great number 
of cattle : it contains mines of lead, filver, iron, copper, 
and quickfilver : the number of inhabitants is edimated 
at 23,060 or 24,000, who are chiefly Lutherans. The 
articles of commerce which they export are fpelt, oats, 
wheat, cattle, wood, pot-afli, honey, wax, iron, and 
charcoal. The counts are hereditary cup-bearers to the 
elector palatine. The affeffment for the Roman month is 
forty florins, and the tax for the chamber at Wetzlar 
twenty-feven rixdollars. 
ER'B AT, a town of Afiatic Turkey, in the province of 
Diarbekir : fifty-eight miles fouth-ead of Diarbek. 
ER'BAZ, a town of Afiatic Turkey, in the province 
of Natolia: thirty-fix miles wed-fouth-wed of Degnizlu. 
ER'BLSPACH, or Erwoltspach, or Erlsbach, a 
town of Germany, in Lower Bavaria : twelve miles wed- 
north-wed of Dingelfingen, and thirty-four ead-loiith-ead 
of Ingolddadt. 
EPCCE, a town of France, in the department of the 
Ille and Vilaine, and chief place of a canton, in the dif- 
tri£l of Bain : five miles ead of Bain. 
ER'CHEE, a town of Perfia, in the province of Adir- 
beitzan : dxty miles ead-north-ead of Tauris. 
ERCIL'LA Y ZUNIGA (Don Alonzo de), an emi¬ 
nent Spanidi poet, born at Madrid in 1533. He was 
early in life made page to the infant don Philip, whom he 
attended in his progrefs through the Low-countries, and 
part of Germany and Italy He afterwards accompanied 
Philip when he went to England to celebrate his marriage 
with queen Mary. He was afterwards engaged in the 
war with the Araucanians, whofe courage and love of 
liberty he leems greatly to have admired, though his 
military duty obliged him to ufe his bed efforts in fub- 
duing them. The intereding feenes to which he was 
witnefs called forth his poetical powers, and he employed 
the intervals of leifure in recording them in heroic verfe. 
He compofed, as it were, with the fword in his hand, and 
the earlier parts of his poem were written upon feraps of 
leather for want of paper. The “ Araucana” is rather an 
hidorical poem than a proper epopoea, as it is a narrative 
of real events, only interfperfed with fabulous circum- 
dances. It was publifhed in three parts : the two fird in 
1577 and 157S, the whole complete in 1590. Mr. Hay- 
ley, in his Effay on Epic Poetry, and the notes attached 
to it, has taken much pains to make Ercilla advantage- 
oudy known to the Engiifh reader, by tranflations of feledft 
parts, and an analyfis of the whole. 
ERDE'Nl-TCHAO, a town of Chinefe Tartary, in the 
country of the Eluths : 680 miles north-wed of Peking. 
Lat. 46. 38. N. Ion. 120. 30 E. Ferro. 
ER'DER, a town of Germany, in the circle of Wed- 
phalia, and county of Lippe : twelve miles north-north- 
ead of Lemgow. 
ERD'MANSDORF, a town of Germany, in the circle 
of Upper Saxony, and circle of Erzgeburg: five miles 
ead of Chemnitz. 
ERE, adv. [aep, Sax. air , Gothic; err, Dutch. This 
word is fometimes vitioufly written e'er, as if from ever. 
It is likewife written or before ever, op and aep in Saxon 
beingindiferiminately written. Mr. Lye.] Before ; fooner 
than .—Ere he would have hang’d a man for the getting a 
hundred badards, he would have paid for the nurfing a 
thoufand. Skakejpeare .—The lions brake all their bones 
in pieces or ever they came to the bottom of the den. DanieL 
The birds dull ceafe to tune their ev’ning fong, 
The winds to breathe, the waving woods to move, 
And dreams to murmur, ere I ceafe to love. Pope . 
ERE ,prep. Before: 
Our fruitful Nile 
Flow’d ere the wonted feafon. Dryden. 
EREBIN'THUS,/. in botany. SeeGALEGA. 
E'REBUS, [sgE&s, Gr. from zny, Heb. night.] In my¬ 
thology, 
