Better pleased
Than Asmodeus with the fishy fume.
Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 168.
Abaddon and Asmodëus caught at me.
Tennyson, St. Simeon Stylitês.
Asmode'us, a "diable bon-homme," with more gaiety than malice; not the least like Mephistophelês. He is the companion of Cle'ofas, whom he carries through the air, and shows him the inside of houses, where they see what is being done in private or secrecy without being seen. Although Asmodeus is not malignant, yet with all his wit, acuteness, and playful malice, we never forget the fiend.—Le Sage, Le Diable Boiteux.
(Such was the popularity of the Diable Boiteux, that two young men fought a duel in a bookseller's shop over the only remaining copy, an incident worthy to be recorded by Asmodeus himself.)
Miss Austen gives us just such a picture of domestic life as Asmodeus would present could he remove the roof of many an English home.—Encyc. Brit. Art. "Romance."
Aso'tus, Prodigality personified in The Purple Island (1633), by Phineas Fletcher, fully described in canto viii. (Greek, asotos, "a profligate.")
Aspa'tia, a maiden the very ideal of ill-fortune and wretchedness. She is the troth-plight wife of Amintor, but Amintor, at the king's request, marries Evad'ne (3 syl.). "Women point with scorn at the forsaken Aspatia, but she bears it all with patience. The pathos of her speeches is most touching, and her death forms the tragical event which gives name to the drama."—Beaumont and Fletcher, The Maid's Tragedy (1610).