ADOSINDA, daughter of the Gothic governor of Auria, in Spain. The Moors having slaughtered her parents, husband, and child, preserved her alive for the captain of Alcahman's regiment. She went to his tent without the least resistance, but implored the captain to give her one night to mourn the death of those so near and dear to her. To this he complied, but during sleep she murdered him with his own scymitar. Roderick, disguised as a monk, helped her to bury the dead bodies of her house, and then she vowed to live for only one object, vengeance. In the great battle, when the Moors were overthrown, she it was who gave the word of attack, "Victory and Vengeance!"--Southey, _Roderick, etc._, iii. (1814). ADRAM'ELECH _(ch=k)_, one of the fallen angels. Milton makes him overthrown by U'riel and Raphael (_Paradise Lost_, vi. 365). According to Scripture, he was one of the idols of Sepharvaim, and Shalmane'ser introduced his worship into Samaria. [The word means "the mighty magnificent king."] The Sepharvites burnt their children in the fire to Adramelech.--2 _Kings_ xvii. 31. Klopstock introduces him into _The Messiah_, and represents him as surpassing Satan in malice and guile, ambition and mischief. He is made to hate every one, even Satan, of whose rank he is jealous, and whom he hoped to overthrow, that by putting an end to his servitude he might become the supreme god of all the created worlds. At the crucifixion he and Satan are both driven back to hell by Obad'don, the angel of death. ADRASTE' (_2 syl_.), a French gentleman, who inveigles a Greek slave named Isidore from don Pèdre. His plan is this: He gets introduced as a portrait-painter, and thus imparts to Isidore his love, and obtains her consent to elope with him. He then sends his slave Zaïde (_2 syl_.) to don Pèdre, to crave protection for ill treatment, and Pèdre promises to befriend her. At this moment Adraste appears, and demands that Zaïde be given up to him to punish as he thinks proper. Pèdre intercedes; Adraste seems to relent; and Pèdre calls for Zaïde. Out comes Isidore instead, with Zaïde's veil. "There," says Pèdre, "take her and use her well." "I will do so," says the Frenchman, and leads off the Greek slave.--Molière, _Le Sicilien, ou L'Amour Peintre_ (1667). ADRIAN'A, a wealthy Ephesian lady, who marries Antiph'olus, twin-brother of Antipholus of Syracuse. The abbess Aemilia is her mother-in-law, but she knows it not; and one day when she accuses her husband of infidelity, she says to the abbess, if he is unfaithful it is not from want of remonstrance, "for it is the one subject of our conversation. In bed I will not let him sleep for speaking of it; at table I will not let him eat for speaking of it; when alone with him I talk of nothing else, and in company I give him frequent hints of it. In a word, all my talk is how vile and bad it is in him to love another better than he loves his wife" (act v. sc. 1).--Shakespeare, _Comedy of Errors_ (1593).