  The lure of a 50 percent reduction in light has brought a multitude of
observers and researchers to epsilon Aur every twenty-seven years, but few have
paid attention to the system outside of eclipse. As early as the late 1800s, it
was clear that the system undergoes some form of quasi-periodic variation
outside of totality, but few considered this effect in their research until the
mid-1950s. In this work we focus exclusively on the out-of-eclipse (OOE)
variations seen in this system. We have digitized twenty-seven sources of
historic photometry from eighty-one different observers. Two of these sources
provide twenty-seven years of inter-eclipse UBV photometry which we have
analyzed using modern period finding techniques. We have discovered the F-star
variations are multiperiodic with at least two periods that evolve in time at
delta(Period) approximately -1.5 day/year. These periods are detected when they
manifest as near-sinusoidal variations at 3,200-day intervals. We discuss our
work in an evolutionary context by comparing the behavior found in e Aur with
bona-fide supergiant and post-AGB stars of similar spectral type. Based upon
our qualitative comparison, we find the photometric behavior of the F-star in
the e Aur system is more indicative of supergiant behavior. Therefore the star
is more likely to be a "traditional supergiant" than a post-AGB object. We
encourage continued photometric monitoring of this system to test our
predictions.
