AR’IBERT, king of the Lombards (653-661), left “no male pledge behind,” but only a daughter named Rhodalind, whom he wished duke Gondibert to marry, but the duke fell in love with Bertha, daughter of As’tragon, the sage.  The tale being unfinished, the sequel is not known.—­Sir W. Davenant, Gondibert (died 1668).

ARIDEUS [A.ree’.de.us], a herald in the Christian army.—­Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered (1575).

A’RIEL, in The Tempest, an airy spirit, able to assume any shape, or even to become invisible.  He was enslaved to the witch Syc’orax, mother of Caliban, who overtasked the little thing, and in punishment for not doing what was beyond his strength, imprisoned him for twelve years in the rift of a pine tree, where Caliban delighted to torture him with impish cruelty.  Prospero, duke of Milan and father of Miranda, liberated Ariel from the pine-rift, and the grateful spirit served the duke for sixteen years, when he was set free.

  And like Ariel in the cloven pine tree,
  For its freedom groans and sighs.

Longfellow, The Golden Milestone.

A’riel, the sylph in Pope’s Rape of the Lock.  The impersonation of “fine life” in the abstract, the nice adjuster of hearts and necklaces.  When disobedient he is punished by being kept hovering over the fumes of the chocolate, or is transfixed with pins, clogged with pomatums, or wedged in the eyes of bodkins.

A’riel, one of the rebel angels.  The word means “the Lion of God.”  Abdiel encountered him, and overthrew him.—­Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 371 (1665).

ARIELLA, an invalid girl, the daughter of Malachi and Hagar his wife, in Come Forth, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and Herbert D. Ward.  Her name signifies STRENGTH OF GOD.  She has lain a helpless cripple for nine years, when she is healed by a word from The Christ (1891).

ARIMAN’ES (4 syl.), the prince of the powers of evil, introduced by Byron in his drama called Manfred.  The Persians recognized a power of good and a power of evil:  the former Yezad, and the latter Ahriman (in Greek, Oroma’zes and Ariman’nis).  These two spirits are ever at war with each other.  Oromazes created twenty-four good spirits, and enclosed them in an egg to be out of the power of Arimanes; but Arimanes pierced the shell, and thus mixed evil with every good.  However, a time will come when Arimanes shall be subjected, and the earth will become a perfect paradise.

ARIMAS’PIANS, a one-eyed people of Scythia, who adorned their hair with gold.  As gold mines were guarded by Gryphons, there were perpetual contentions between the Arimaspians and the Gryphons. (See GRYPHON.)

Arimaspi, quos diximus uno oculo in fronte media in signes; quibus assidue bellum esse circa metella cum gryphis, ferarum volucri genere, quale vulgo traditur, eruente ex cuniculis aurum, mire cupiditate et feris custodientibus, et Arimaspis rapientibus, multi, sed maxime illustres Herodotus et Aristeas Proconnesius scribunt.—­Pliny, Nat.  Hist. vii. 2.

AR’IOCH ("a fierce lion"), one of the fallen angels overthrown by Abdiel.—­Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 371 (1665).