ARIODAN’TES (5 syl.), the beloved of Geneu’ra, a Scotch princess.  Geneura being accused of incontinence, Ariodantes stood forth her champion, vindicated her innocence, and married her.—­Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (1516).

ARI’ON.  William Falconer, author of The Shipwreck, speaks of himself under this nom de plume (canto iii).  He was sent to sea when a lad, and says he was eager to investigate the “antiquities of foreign states.”  He was junior officer in the Britannia, which was wrecked against the projecting verge of cape Colonna, the most southern point of Attica, and was the only officer who survived.

  Thy woes, Arion, and thy simple tale
  O’er all the hearts shall triumph and prevail. 
  Campbell, Pleasures of Hope, ii. (1799).

Ari’on, a Greek musician, who, to avoid being murdered for his wealth, threw himself into the sea, and was carried to Tae’naros on the back of a dolphin.

Ari’on, the wonderful horse which Hercules gave to Adrastos.  It had the gift of human speech, and the feet on the right side were the feet of a man.

(One of the masques in Sir W. Scott’s Kenilworth is called “Arion.”)

ARIO’STO OF THE NORTH, Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832).

  And, like the Ariosto of the North,
  Sang ladye-love and war, romance and knightly worth.

Byron, Childe Harold, iv. 40.

ARISTAE’US, protector of vines and olives, huntsmen and herdsmen.  He instructed man also in the management of bees, taught him by his mother Cyrene.

  In such a palace Aristaeus found
  Cyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale
  Of his lost bees to her maternal ear. 
  Cowper, The Ice Palace of Anne of Russia.

ARISTAR’CHUS, any critic.  Aristarchus of Samothrace was the greatest critic of antiquity.  His labors were chiefly directed to the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer.  He divided them into twenty-four books each, marked every doubtful line with an obelos, and every one he considered especially beautiful with an asterisk. (Fl.  B.C. 156; died aged 72.)

The whole region of belle lettres fell under my inspection....  There, sirs, like another Aristarch, I dealt out fame and damnation at pleasure.—­Samuel Foote, The Liar, i. 1.

“How, friend,” replied the archbishop, “has it [the homily] met with any Aristarchus [severe critic]?”—­Lesage, Gil Blas, vii. 4 (1715).

ARISTE (2 syl.), brother of Chrysale (2 syl.), not a savant, but a practical tradesman.  He sympathizes with Henriette, his womanly niece, against his sister-in-law Philaminte (3 syl.) and her daughter Armande (2 syl.), who femmes savantes.—­Moliere, Les Femmes Savantes (1672).

ARISTE’AS, a poet who continued to appear and disappear alternately for above 400 years, and who visited all the mythical nations of the earth.  When not in the human form, he took the form of a stag.—­Greek Legend.