Al’ciphron, “the epicurean,” the hero of T. Moore’s romance entitled The Epicurean.

  Like Aleiphron, we swing in air and darkness,
  and know not whither the wind blows us.

—­Putnam’s Magazine.

ALCME’NA (in Moliere, Alcmene), the wife of Amphitryon, general of the Theban army.  While her husband is absent warring against the Telebo’ans, Jupiter assumes the form of Amphitryon; but Amphitryon himself returns home the next day, and great confusion arises between the false and true Amphitryon, which is augmented by Mercury, who personates Sos’ia, the slave of Amphitryon.  By this amour of Jupiter, Alcmena becomes the mother of Her’cules.  Plautus, Moliere, and Dryden have all taken this plot for a comedy entitled Amphitryon.

ALCOFRI’BAS, the name by which Rabelais was called, after he came out of the prince’s mouth, where he resided for six months, taking toll of every morsel of food that the prince ate.  Pantag’ruel gave “the merry fellow the lairdship of Salmigondin.”—­Rabelais, Pantagruel, ii. 32 (1533).

AL’COLOMB, “subduer of hearts,” daughter of Abou Aibou of Damascus, and sister of Ganem.  The caliph Haroun-al-Raschid, in a fit of jealousy, commanded Ganem to be put to death, and his mother and sister to do penance for three days in Damascus, and then to be banished from Syria.  The two ladies came to Bag dad, and were taken in by the charitable syndic of the jewellers.  When the jealous fit of the caliph was over he sent for the two exiles.  Alcolomb he made his wife, and her mother he married to his vizier.—­Arabian Nights ("Ganem, the Slave of Love “).

ALCY’ON “the wofullest man alive,” but once “the jolly shepherd swain that wont full merrily to pipe and dance,” near where the Severn flows.  One day he saw a lion’s cub, and brought it up till it followed him about like a dog; but a cruel satyr shot it in mere wantonness.  By the lion’s cub he means Daphne, who died in her prime, and the cruel satyr is death.  He said he hated everything—­the heaven, the earth, fire, air, and sea, the day, the night; he hated to speak, to hear, to taste food, to see objects, to smell, to feel; he hated man and woman too, for his Daphne lived no longer.  What became of this doleful shepherd the poet could never ween.  Alcyon is sir Arthur Gorges.—­Spencer, Daphnaida (in seven fyttes, 1590).

  And there is that Alcyon bent to mourn,
  Though fit to frame an everlasting ditty. 
  Whose gentle sprite for Daphne’s death doth turn
  Sweet lays of love to endless plaints of pity.

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

ALCY’ONE or HALCYONE (4 syl.), daughter of Aeolus, who, on hearing of her husband’s death by shipwreck, threw herself into the sea, and was changed to a kingfisher. (See HALCYON DAYS.)

ALDABEL’LA, wife of Orlando, sister of Oliver, and daughter of Monodan’tes.—­Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, etc. (1516).