ERCILLA Y ZUNIGA, a Spanish poet, born at Madrid; took part in the war of the Spaniards with the Araucos in Chile, which he celebrated in an epic of no small merit called “La Araucana”; he ended his days in poverty (1553-1595).

ERDGEIST, the Spirit of the Earth, represented in Goethe’s “Faust” as assiduously weaving, at the Time-Loom, night and day, in death as well as life, the earthly vesture of the Eternal, and thereby revealing the Invisible to mortal eyes.

ERDMANN, a German philosopher, born at Wolmar, professor at Halle; was of the school of Hegel, an authority on the history of philosophy (1805-1892).

EREBUS, a region of utter darkness in the depths of Hades, into which no mortal ever penetrated, the proper abode of Pluto and his Queen with their train of attendants, such as the Erinnyes, through which the spirits of the dead must pass on their way to Hades; equivalent to the valley of the shadow of death.

ERECTHEUS or ERICHTHONIUS, the mythical first king of Athens; favoured and protected from infancy by Athena, to whom accordingly he dedicated the city; he was buried in the temple of Athena, and worshipped afterwards as a god; it is fabled of him that when an infant he was committed by Athena in a chest to the care of Agraulos and Herse, under a strict charge not to pry into it; they could not restrain their curiosity, opened the chest, saw the child entwined with serpents, were seized with madness, and threw themselves down from the height of the Acropolis to perish at the foot.

ERFURT (72), a town in Saxony, on the Gera, 14 m.  W. of Weimar, formerly capital of Thueringia, and has many interesting buildings, amongst the number the 14th-century Gothic cathedral with its great bell, weighing 131/2 tons, and cast in 1497; the monastery of St. Augustine (changed into an orphanage in 1819), in which Luther was a monk; the Academy of Sciences, and the library with 60,000 vols. and 1000 MSS.; various textile factories flourish.

ERGOT, a diseased state of grasses, &c., but a disease chiefly attacking rye, produced by a fungus developing on the seeds; the drug “ergot of rye” is obtained from a species of this fungus.

ERIC, the name of several of the kings of Denmark, and Sweden, and Norway, the most notorious being the son of the noble Swedish king GUSTAVUS VASA (q. v.), who aspired to the hand of Elizabeth of England and challenged his rival Leicester to a duel; afterwards sought Mary of Scotland, but eventually married a peasant girl who had nursed him out of madness brought on by dissipation; was deposed after a State trial instigated by his own brothers, and ultimately poisoned himself in prison eight years later (1533-1577).

ERIC THE RED, a Norwegian chief who discovered Greenland in the 10th century, and sent out expeditions to the coast of North America.

ERICSSON, JOHN, a distinguished Swedish engineer, born at Langbanshyttan; went to England in 1826 and to United States of America in 1839, where he died; invented the screw propeller of steamships; built warships for the American navy, and amongst them the famous Monitor; his numerous inventions mark a new era in naval and steamship construction (1802-1889).