=Alpes=, mountains that separate Italy from Spain, Gaul, Rhætia, and Germany; considered as the highest ground in Europe. From them arise several rivers, which, after watering the neighbouring countries, discharge themselves into the German, Mediterranean, and Euxine seas. The Alps are covered with perpetual snows, and distinguished, according to their situation, by the different names of _Cottiæ_, _Carnicæ_, _Graiæ_, _Noricæ_, _Juliæ_, _Maritimæ_, _Pannoniæ_, _Penninæ_, _Pœnæ_, _Rhætiæ_, _Tridentinæ_, _Venetæ_. A traveller is generally five days in reaching the top in some parts. They were supposed for a long time to be impassable. Hannibal marched his army over them, and made his way through rocks, by softening and breaking them with vinegar. They were inhabited by fierce uncivilized nations, who were unsubdued till the age of Augustus, who, to eternize the victory which he had obtained over them, erected a pillar in their territory. _Strabo_, bks. 4 & 5.――_Livy_, bk. 21, ch. 35.――_Juvenal_, satire 10, li. 151.――_Horace_, bk. 2, satire 5, li. 41.――_Lucan_, bk. 1, li. 183.――_Tacitus_, _Histories_, bk. 3, ch. 53. =Alpheia=, a surname of Diana in Elis. It was given her when the river Alpheus endeavoured to ravish her without success.――――A surname of the nymph Arethusa, because loved by the Alpheus. _Ovid_, _Metamorphoses_, bk. 5, li. 487. =Alphēnor=, one of Niobe’s sons. _Ovid_, _Metamorphoses_, bk. 6, fable 6. =Alphēnus.= _See:_ Alfenus. =Alphesibœa=, daughter of the river Phlegeus, married Alcmæon son of Amphiaraus, who had fled to her father’s court after the murder of his mother. _See:_ Alcmæon. She received, as a bridal present, the famous necklace which Polynices had given to Eriphyle, to induce her to betray her husband Amphiaraus. Alcmæon being persecuted by the means of his mother, left his wife by order of the oracle, and retired near the Achelous, whose daughter Callirrhoe had two sons by him, and begged of him, as a present, the necklace which was then in the hands of Alphesibœa. He endeavoured to obtain it, and was killed by Temenus and Axion, Alphesibœa’s brothers, who thus revenged their sister who had been so innocently abandoned. _Hyginus_, fable 244.――_Propertius_, bk. 8, poem 15, li. 15.――_Pausanias_, bk. 8, ch. 24. =Alphesibœus=, a shepherd, often mentioned in Virgil’s eclogues.