=Astu=, a Greek word which signifies _city_, generally applied, by way of distinction, to Athens, which was the most capital city of Greece. The word _urbs_ is applied with the same meaning of superiority to Rome, and πολις to Alexandria the capital of Ægypt, as also to Troy. =Astur=, an Etrurian who assisted Æneas against Turnus. _Virgil_, _Æneid_, bk. 10, li. 180. =Astŭra=, a small river and village of Latium, where Antony’s soldiers cut off Cicero’s head. =Astŭres=, a people of Hispania Tarraconensis, who spent all their lives in digging for mines of ore. _Lucan_, bk. 4, li. 298.――_Silius Italicus_, bk. 1, li. 231. =Astyăge=, a daughter of Hypseus, who married Periphas, by whom she had some children, among whom was Antion the father of Ixion. =Astyăges=, a son of Cyaxares, was the last king of Media. He was father to Mandane, whom he gave in marriage to Cambyses, an ignoble person of Persia, because he was told by a dream that his daughter’s son would dispossess him of his crown. From such a marriage he hoped that none but mean and ignorant children could be raised; but he was disappointed, and though he had exposed his daughter’s son by the effects of a second dream, he was deprived of his crown by his grandson, after a reign of 35 years. Astyages was very cruel and oppressive; and Harpagus, one of his officers, whose son he had wantonly murdered, encouraged Mandane’s son, who was called Cyrus, to take up arms against his grandfather, and he conquered him and took him prisoner, 559 B.C. Xenophon, in his Cyropædia, relates a different story, and asserts that Cyrus and Astyages lived in the most undisturbed friendship together. _Justin_, bk. 1, ch. 4, &c. ――_Herodotus_, bk. 1, chs. 74, 75, &c.――――A grammarian who wrote a commentary on Callimachus.――――A man changed into a stone by Medusa’s head. _Ovid_, _Metamorphoses_, bk. 5, fable 6. =Astyălus=, a Trojan killed by Neoptolemus. _Homer_, _Iliad_, bk. 6.