ASTRE’A (Mrs. Alphra Behn), an authoress.  She published the story of Prince Oroonoka (died 1689).

The stage now loosely does Astrea tread.  Pope.

ASTRINGER, a falconer.  Shakespeare introduces an astringer in All’s Well that Ends Well, act v. sc. 1. (From the French austour, Latin austercus, “a goshawk.”) A “gentle astringer” is a gentleman falconer.

We usually call a falconer who keeps that kind of hawk [the goshawk] an austringer.—­Cowell, Law Dictionary.

AS’TRO-FIAMMAN’TE (5 syl.), queen of the night.  The word means “flaming star.”—­Mozart, Die Zauberfloete (1791).

ASTRONOMER (The), in Rasselas, an old enthusiast, who believed himself to have the control and direction of the weather.  He leaves Imlac his successor, but implores him not to interfere with the constituted order.

“I have possessed,” said he to Imlac, “for five years the regulation of the weather, and the distribution of the seasons:  the sun has listened to my dictates, and passed from tropic to tropic by my direction; the clouds, at my call, have poured their waters, and the Nile has overflowed at my command; I have restrained the rage of the Dog-star, and mitigated the fervor of the Crab.  The winds alone ... have hitherto refused my authority....  I am the first of human beings to whom this trust has been imparted.”—­Dr. Johnson, Rasselas, xli.—­xliii. (1759).

AS’TROPHEL (Sir Philip Sidney).  “Phil.  Sid.” may be a contraction of philos sidus, and the Latin sidus being changed to the Greek astron, we get astron philos ("star-lover").  The “star” he loved was Penelope Devereux, whom he calls Stella ("star"), and to whom he was betrothed.  Spenser wrote a poem called Astrophel, to the memory of Sir Philip Sidney.

  But while as Astrophel did live and reign,
  Amongst all swains was none his paragon.

  Spenser, Colin Clout’s Come Home Again (1591).

ASTYN’OME (4 syl.) or CHRYSEIS, daughter of Chryses priest of Apollo.  When Lyrnessus was taken, Astynome fell to the share of Agamemnon, but the father begged to be allowed to ransom her.  Agamemnon refused to comply, whereupon the priest invoked the anger of his patron god, and Apollo sent a plague into the Grecian camp.  This was the cause of contention between Agamemnon and Achilles, and forms the subject of Homer’s epic called The Iliad.

AS’WAD, son of Shedad king of Ad.  He was saved alive when the angel of death destroyed Shedad and all his subjects, because he showed mercy to a camel which had been bound to a tomb to starve to death, that it might serve its master on the day of resurrection.—­Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer (1797).

ATABA’LIPA, the last emperor of Peru, subdued by Pizarro, the Spanish general.  Milton refers to him in Paradise Lost, xi. 409 (1665).