AMA’DIS OF GREECE, a supplemental part of Amadis of Gaul, by Felicia’no de Silva.  There are also several other Amadises—­as Amadis of Colchis, Amadis of Trebisond, Amadis of Cathay, but all these are very inferior to the original Amadis of Gaul.

The ancient fables, whose relickes doe yet remain, namely, Lancelot of the Lake, Pierceforest, Tristram, Giron the Courteous, etc., doe beare witnesse of this odde vanitie.  Herewith were men fed for the space of 500 yeeres, untill our language growing more polished, and our minds more ticklish, they were driven to invent some novelties wherewith to delight us.  Thus came ye bookes of Amadis into light among us in this last age.—­Francis de la Noue, Discourses, 87 (1587).

AMAI’MON (3 syl.), one of the principal devils.  Asmode’us is one of his lieutenants.  Shakespeare twice refers to him, in 1 Henry IV. act ii. sc. 4, and in The Merry Wives of Windsor, act ii. sc. 2.

AMAL’AHTA, son of Erill’yab the deposed queen of the Hoamen (2 syl.), an Indian tribe settled on the south of the Missouri.  He is described as a brutal savage, wily, deceitful, and cruel.  Amalahta wished to marry the princess Goer’vyl, Madoc’s sister, and even seized her by force, but was killed in his flight.—­Southey, Madoc, ii. 16 (1805).

AMALTHAE’A, the sibyl who offered to sell to Tarquin nine books of prophetic oracles.  When the king refused to give her the price demanded, she went away, burnt three of them, and returning to the king, demanded the same price for the remaining six.  Again the king declined the purchase.  The sibyl, after burning three more of the volumes, demanded the original sum for the remaining three.  Tarquin paid the money, and Amalthaea was never more seen.  Aulus Gellius says that Amalthaea burnt the books in the king’s presence.  Pliny affirms that the original number of volumes was only three, two of which the sibyl burnt, and the third was purchased by king Tarquin.

AMALTHE’A, a mistress of Ammon and mother of Bacchus.  Ammon hid his mistress in the island Nysa (in Africa), in order to elude the vigilance and jealousy of his wife Rhea.  This account (given by Diodorus Sic’ulus, bk. iii., and by sir Walter Raleigh in his History of the World, I. vi. 5) differs from the ordinary story, which makes Sem’ele the mother of Bacchus, and Rhea his nurse. (Ammon is Ham or Cham, the son of Noah, founder of the African race.)

... that Nyseian ile, Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham (Whom Gentiles Ammon call, and Libyan Jove) Hid Amalthea and her florid son, Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea’s eye.

Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 275 (1665).

AMANDA, wife of Loveless.  Lord Foppington pays her amorous attentions, but she utterly despises the conceited coxcomb, and treats him with contumely.  Colonel Townly, in order to pique his lady-love, also pays attention to Loveless’s wife, but she repels his advances with indignation, and Loveless, who overhears her, conscious of his own shortcomings, resolves to reform his ways, and, “forsaking all other,” to remain true to Amanda, “so long as they both should live.”—­Sheridan, A Trip to Scarborough.