Miss Austen gives us just such a picture of domestic life as Asmodeus would present could he remove the roof of many an English home.—­Encyc.  Brit.  Art.  “Romance.”

ASO’TUS, Prodigality personified in The Purple Island (1633), by Phineas Fletcher, fully described in canto viii. (Greek, asotos, “a profligate.”)

ASPA’TIA, a maiden the very ideal of ill-fortune and wretchedness.  She is the troth-plight wife of Amintor, but Amintor, at the king’s request, marries Evad’ne (3 syl.).  “Women point with scorn at the forsaken Aspatia, but she bears it all with patience.  The pathos of her speeches is most touching, and her death forms the tragical event which gives name to the drama.”—­Beaumont and Fletcher, The Maid’s Tragedy (1610).

AS’PRAMONTE (3 syl.), in Sir W. Scott’s Count Robert of Paris (time, Rufus).

  The old knight, father of Brenhilda.
  The lady of Aspramonte, the knight’s wife.
  Brenhilda of Aspramonte, their daughter, wife of count Robert.

AS’RAEL or AZ’RAEL, an angel of death.  He is immeasurable in height, insomuch that the space between his eyes equals a 70,000 days’ journey.—­Mohammedan Mythology.

AS’SAD, son of Camaral’zaman and Haiatal’nefous (5 syl.), and half-brother of Amgiad (son of Camaralzaman and Badoura).  Each of the two mothers conceived a base passion for the other’s son, and when the young men repulsed their advances, accused them to their father of gross designs upon their honor.  Camaralzaman commanded his vizier to put them both to death; but instead of doing so, he conducted them out of the city, and told them not to return to their father’s kingdom (the island of Ebony).  They wandered on for ten days, when Assad went to a city in sight to obtain provisions.  Here he was entrapped by an old fire-worshipper, who offered him hospitality, but cast him into a dungeon, intending to offer him up a human victim on the “mountain of fire.”  The ship in which he was sent being driven on the coast of queen Margiana, Assad was sold to her as a slave, but being recaptured was carried back to his old dungeon.  Here Bosta’na, one of the old man’s daughters, took pity on him, and released him, and ere long Assad married queen Margiana, while Amgiad, out of gratitude, married Bostana.—­Arabian Nights ("Amgiad and Assad").

ASTAG’ORAS, a female fiend, who has the power of raising storms.—­Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered (1575).

ASTAR’TE (3 syl.), the Phoenician moon-goddess, the Astoreth of the Syrians.

  With these
  Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called
  Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns. 
  Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 438 (1665).

As’tarte (2 syl.), an attendant on the princess Anna Comne’na.—­Sir W. Scott, Count Robert of Paris (time, Eufus).