AS'TRO-FIAMMAN'TE (5 _syl_.), queen of the night. The word means "flaming star."--Mozart, _Die Zauberflöte_ (1791). ASTRONOMER (_The_), in _Rasselas_, an old enthusiast, who believed himself to have the control and direction of the weather. He leaves Imlac his successor, but implores him not to interfere with the constituted order. "I have possessed," said he to Imlac, "for five years the regulation of the weather, and the distribution of the seasons: the sun has listened to my dictates, and passed from tropic to tropic by my direction; the clouds, at my call, have poured their waters, and the Nile has overflowed at my command; I have restrained the rage of the Dog-star, and mitigated the fervor of the Crab. The winds alone ... have hitherto refused my authority.... I am the first of human beings to whom this trust has been imparted."--Dr. Johnson, _Rasselas_, xli.--xliii. (1759). AS'TROPHEL (_Sir Philip Sidney_). "Phil. Sid." may be a contraction of _philos sidus_, and the Latin _sidus_ being changed to the Greek _astron_, we get _astron philos_ ("star-lover"). The "star" he loved was Penelopê Devereux, whom he calls _Stella_ ("star"), and to whom he was betrothed. Spenser wrote a poem called _Astrophel_, to the memory of Sir Philip Sidney. But while as Astrophel did live and reign, Amongst all swains was none his paragon. Spenser, _Colin Clout's Come Home Again_ (1591). ASTYN'OME (4 _syl_.) or CHRYSEÏS, daughter of Chrysês priest of Apollo. When Lyrnessus was taken, Astynomê fell to the share of Agamemnon, but the father begged to be allowed to ransom her. Agamemnon refused to comply, whereupon the priest invoked the anger of his patron god, and Apollo sent a plague into the Grecian camp. This was the cause of contention between Agamemnon and Achillês, and forms the subject of Homer's epic called _The Iliad_. AS'WAD, son of Shedad king of Ad. He was saved alive when the angel of death destroyed Shedad and all his subjects, because he showed mercy to a camel which had been bound to a tomb to starve to death, that it might serve its master on the day of resurrection.--Southey, _Thalaba the Destroyer_ (1797). ATABA'LIPA, the last emperor of Peru, subdued by Pizarro, the Spanish general. Milton refers to him in _Paradise Lost_, xi. 409 (1665). AT'ALA, the name of a novel by François Auguste Chateaubriand. Atala, the daughter of a white man and a Christianized Indian, takes an oath of virginity, but subsequently falling in love with Chactas, a young Indian, she poisons herself for fear that she may be tempted to break her oath. The novel was received with extraordinary enthusiasm (1801). (This has nothing to do with _Attila_, king of the Huns, nor with _Atlialie_ (queen of Judah), the subject of Racine's great tragedy.)