cities of former days, there is a succession of small towns along the course of the river—Ramadiya, Feluja, Mussaïb, Hillah, Diwanieh, Samawa, el-Khudr (an ancient daphne or sacred grove, 31° 11′ 58″ N., 76° 6′ 9″ E., the only one anywhere which preserves to this day its ancient charter of the inviolability of all life within its precincts), Nasrieh and Suk-esh-Sheiukh—by means of which the Turkish government controls the river and levies taxes on a small part of the adjacent territory. At such settlements the river is lined with gardens and plantations of palms. The greater part of the region, however, even along the river shores, is inhabited only by roaming Bedouin or half-savage Maʽdan Arabs (see Irak).
Navigation.—The length of the Euphrates from its source at Diadin to the sea is about 1800 m., and its fall during the last 1200 m. about 10 ins. per mile. The river begins to rise in the end of March and attains its greatest height between the 21st and the 28th of May. It is lowest in November, and rocks, shallows, and the remains of old dams then render it almost unnavigable. In antiquity, however, it was evidently in use for the transportation of merchandise and even of armies. Boats built in Syrian ports were placed on the Euphrates by Sennacherib and Alexander, and Herodotus states (i. 185) that in his day the river was a frequented route followed by merchants on their way from the Mediterranean to Babylon. As the most direct line of transit between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, offering an alternative means of communication with India not greatly inferior to the Egyptian route, the Euphrates route early attracted the attention of the British government. During the Napoleonic wars, indeed, and up to the time when the introduction of steam navigation rendered the Red Sea accessible at all seasons of the year, the political correspondence of the home and Indian governments usually passed by the Euphrates route. Various plans were suggested for the development of this route as a means of goods as well as postal conveyance, and in 1835 Colonel F. R. Chesney was sent out at the head of an expedition with instructions to transport two steamers from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, and, after putting them together at Birejik, to attempt the descent of the river to the sea. One of these steamers was lost in a squall during the passage down the river near el-ʽIrsi, but the other performed the voyage in safety and thus demonstrated the practicability of the downward navigation. Following on this first experiment, the East India Company, in 1841, proposed to maintain a permanent flotilla on the Tigris and Euphrates, and set two vessels, the “Nitocris” and the “Nimrod,” under the command of Captain Campbell of the Indian navy, to attempt the ascent of the latter river. The experiment was so far successful that, with incredible difficulty, the two vessels did actually reach Meskene, but the result of the expedition was to show that practically the river could not be used as a high-road of commerce, the continuous rapids and falls during the low season, caused mainly by the artificial obstructions of the irrigating dams, being insurmountable by ordinary steam power, and the aid of hundreds of hands being thus required to drag the vessels up the stream at those points by main force. Under Midhat Pasha, governor-general of Bagdad from 1866 to 1871, an attempt was made by the Turkish authorities to establish regular steam navigation on the Euphrates. Midhat caused many of the dams to be destroyed and for some years occasional steamers were run between Meskene and Hillah in flood time, from April to August. But with the transfer of Midhat this feeble attempt at navigation was abandoned. At the present time the river is navigated by sailing craft of some size from Hit downward. Above that point there is no navigation except by the native rafts (kellek), which descend the river and are broken up on arrival at their point of destination. There is, however, little travel of this sort on the Euphrates in comparison with the amount on the Tigris.
When it became evident that, under present conditions at least, the navigation of the middle Euphrates was impracticable, attention was turned, owing to the peculiarly advantageous geographical position of its valley, to schemes for connecting the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf by railway as an alternative means of communication with India, and various surveys were made for this purpose and various routes laid out. All these schemes, however, fell through either on the financial question, or on the unwillingness of the Turkish government to sanction any line not connected directly with Constantinople. With the acquisition of the Suez Canal, moreover, the value of this route from the British standpoint was so greatly diminished that the scheme, so far as England was concerned, was quite abandoned. (For further notice of the railway question see Bagdad.)
Bibliography.—Gen. F. R. Chesney, Euphrates Expedition (1850); W. F. Ainsworth, Researches in Assyria and Babylonia (1838), and Personal Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition (1888); A. H. Layard, Nineveh and Babylon (1853); W. K. Loftus, Chaldaea and Susiana (1857); Geo. Rawlinson, Herodotus, bk. 1, essay ix. (1862); A. Blunt, Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates (1873); Josef Černik, Studien-Expedition (1873); H. Kiepert, Ruinenfelder Babyloniens (1883); Ed. Sachau, Reise in Syrien u. Mesopotamien (1883), and Am Euphrat u. Tigris (1900); Guy Le Strange, “Description of Mesopotamia,” in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1895), and Baghdad under the Abbasid Caliphate (1901); J. P. Peters, Nippur (1897); M. v. Oppenheim, Vom Mittelmeer zum Persischen Golf (1900); H. V. Geere, By Nile and Euphrates (1904); Baedeker, Palestine and Syria (1906); Murray, Handbook to Asia Minor, &c., section iii. (H. C. R.; C. W. W.; J. P. Pe.)
EUPHRONIUS, the most noted of the group of great vase-painters,
who lived in Athens in the time of the Persian wars, and
worked upon red-figured vases (see Greek Art and Ceramics).
There is a monograph by W. Klein dealing with the artist. As all
the great paintings of Greece have disappeared, we are obliged
to trust to the designs on vases for our knowledge of Greek
drawing and composition. Euphronius is stiff and archaic in style,
but his subjects are varied, his groupings original and striking,
and his mastery of the line decided. In their way, the vases
which he painted will hold their own in comparison with those
of any nation; for simplicity, truthfulness and charm they can
scarcely be matched.
EUPHROSYNE, the name of two Byzantine empresses.
1. Euphrosyne, a daughter of Constantine VI. Although she had taken a monastic vow she became the second wife of Michael II. (q.v.), a marriage which was practically forced upon her by Michael, who was anxious to strengthen his claims to the throne by an alliance with the last representative of the Isaurian dynasty, and secured the compliance of senate and patriarch with his desire. No issue was born of this union, and after the death of her husband and accession of her stepson Theophilus Euphrosyne again retired into a convent.
2. Euphrosyne, the wife of Alexius III. (q.v.). After securing the election of her husband to the throne by wholesale bribery she virtually took the government into her hands and restored the waning influence of the monarchy over the nobles. In spite of her talent for government she went far to hasten the empire’s downfall by her unbounded extravagance, and made the dynasty unpopular by her open profligacy, which went unpunished but for one short term of banishment. She followed her husband into exile in 1203 and died seven years later in Epirus.
EUPHUISM, the peculiar mode of speaking and writing
brought into fashion in England towards the end of the reign of
Elizabeth by the vogue of the fashionable romance of Euphues,
published in 1578 by John Lyly. As early as 1570 Ascham in his
Schoolmaster had said that “Euphues” (that is, a man well-endowed
by nature, from the Gr. εὖ, φυή, well, growth) is “he that
is apt by goodness of wit, and appliable by readiness of will,
to learning, having all other qualities of the mind and parts of
the body that must another day serve learning.” Lyly adopted
this word as the name of the hero of his romance, and it is with
him that the vogue of Euphuism began. John Lyly, “always
averse to the crabbed studies of logic and philosophy, and his
genie being naturally bent to the pleasant paths of poetry,”
devoted himself exclusively to the service of the ladies, a thing
absolutely unprecedented in English literature. He addressed
himself to “the gentlewomen of England,” and he had the
audacity, in that grave age, to say that he would rather see
his books “lie shut in a lady’s casket than open in a scholar’s
study.” In order to attain this object, he set himself to create a
