Astarte a woman, beloved by Manfred.—­Byron, Manfred.

We think of Astarte as young, beautiful, innocent,—­guilty, lost, murdered, judged, pardoned; but still, in her permitted visit to earth, speaking in a voice of sorrow, and with a countenance yet pale with mortal trouble.  We had but a glimpse of her in her beauty and innocence, but at last she rises before us in all the moral silence of a ghost, with fixed, glazed, and passionless eyes, revealing death, judgment, and eternity.—­Professor Wilson.

  The lady Astarte his?  Hush! who
  comes here? (iii. 4.)
  ...The same Astarte? no! (iii. 4.)

AS’TERY, a nymph in the train of Venus; the lightest of foot and most active of all.  One day the goddess, walking abroad with her nymphs, bade them go gather flowers.  Astery gathered most of all; but Venus, in a fit of jealousy, turned her into a butterfly, and threw the flowers into the wings.  Since then all butterflies have borne wings of many gay colors.—­Spenser, Muiopotmos or the Butterfly’s Fate (1590).

ASTOL’PHO, the English cousin of Orlando; his father was Otho.  He was a great boaster, but was generous, courteous, gay, and singularly handsome.  Astolpho was carried to Alci’na’s isle on the back of a whale; and when Alcina tired of him, she changed him into a myrtle tree, but Melissa disenchanted him.  Astolpho descended into the infernal regions; he also went to the moon, to cure Orlando of his madness by bringing back his lost wits in a phial.—­Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (1516).

AS’TON (Sir Jacob), a cavalier during the Commonwealth; one of the partisans of the late king.—­Sir W. Scott, Woodstock (period, Commonwealth).

As’ton (Enrico). So Henry Ashton is called in Donizetti’s opera of Lucia di Lammermoor (1835). (See ASHTON.)

AS’TORAX, king of Paphos and brother of the princess Calis.—­Beaumont and Fletcher, The Mad Lover (before 1618).

AS’TORETH, the goddess-moon of Syrian mythology; called by Jeremiah, “The Queen of Heaven,” and by the Phoenicians, “Astar’te.”

  With these [the host of heaven] in troop
  Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called
  Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns.

  Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 438 (1665).

(Milton does not always preserve the difference between Ashtaroth and Ashtoreth; for he speaks of the “mooned Ashtaroth, heaven’s queen and mother.”)

AS’TRAGON, the philosopher and great physician, by whom Gondibert and his friends were cured of the wounds received in the faction fight stirred up by prince Oswald.  Astragon had a splendid library and museum.  One room was called “Great Nature’s Office,” another “Nature’s Nursery,” and the library was called “The Monument of Vanished Mind.”  Astragon (the poet says) discovered the loadstone and its use in navigation.  He had one child, Bertha, who loved duke Gondibert, and to whom she was promised in marriage.  The tale being unfinished, the sequel is not known.—­Sir W. Davenant, Gondibert (died 1668).