ERNST, ELECTOR OF SAXONY, founder of the Ernestine line of Saxon princes, ancestor of Prince Consort, born at Altenburg; was kidnapped along with his brother Albert in 1455, an episode famous in German history as the “Prinzenraub” (i. e. the stealing of the prince); succeeded his father in 1464; annexed Thueringia in 1482, and three years later shared his territory with his brother Albert (1441-1486).

ERNST I., Duke of Saxe-Gotha and Altenburg; served in the Thirty Years’ War under Gustavus Adolphus, and shared in the victory of Luetzen; was an able and wise ruler, and gained for himself the surname of “the Pious” (1601-1675).

EROS (in Latin, Cupido), the Greek god of love, the son of Aphrodite, and the youngest of the gods, though he figures in the cosmogony as one of the oldest of the gods, and as the uniting power in the life of the gods and the life of the universe, was represented at last as a wanton boy from whose wiles neither gods nor men were safe.

EROSTRATUS, an obscure Ephesian, who, to immortalise his name, set fire to the temple of Ephesus on the night, as it happened, when Alexander the Great was born; the Ephesians thought to defeat his purpose by making it death to any one who named his name, but in vain, the decree itself giving wider and wider publicity to the act.

ERPENIUS (Thomas van Erpen), Arabic scholar, born at Gorkum, in Holland; after completing his studies at Leyden and Paris, became professor of Oriental Languages there; famed for his Arabic grammar and rudiments, which served as text-books for upwards of 200 years (1585-1624).

ERSCH, JOHANN SAMUEL, a bibliographer, born at Grossglogau; after a college career at Halle devoted himself to journalism, and in 1800 became librarian of the University of Jena; subsequently filled the chair of Geography and Statistics at Halle; his “Handbook of German Literature” marks the beginning of German bibliography; began in 1818, along with Gruber, the publication of an encyclopaedia which is still unfinished (1766-1828).

ERSKINE, EBENEZER, founder of the Secession Church of Scotland, born at Chirnside, Berwickshire; minister at Portmoak for 28 years; took part in the patronage dispute, and was deposed (1733), when he formed a church at Gairney Bridge, near Kinross, the nucleus of the Secession Church (1703-1754).

ERSKINE, HENRY, a famous Scotch lawyer, second son of the Earl of Buchan, born at Edinburgh; called to the bar and became Lord Advocate; a Whig in politics; brought about useful legal reforms; noted as a brilliant wit and orator (1746-1817).

ERSKINE, JOHN, a Scottish jurist; called to the bar in 1719; became professor of Scots Law in Edinburgh University in 1837, resigned 1763; author of two important works on Scots Law, “The Institutes” and “Principles” (1695-1768).