Adme'tus, a king of Thessaly, husband of Alcestis. Apollo, being condemned by Jupiter to serve a mortal for twelve months for slaying a Cyclops, entered the service of Admetus. James R. Lowell has a poem on the subject, called The Shepherd of King Admetus (1819-1891).
Ad'mirable (The): (1) Aben-Ezra, a Spanish rabbin, born at Tole'do (1119-1174). (2) James Crichton (Kry-ton), the Scotchman (1551-1573). (3) Roger Bacon, called "The Admirable Doctor" (1214-1292).
Adolf, bishop of Cologne, was devoured by mice or rats in 1112. (See HATTO.)
Ad'ona, a seraph, the tutelar spirit of James, the "first martyr of the twelve."—Klopstock, The Messiah, iii. (1748).
Adonai, the mysterious spirit of pure mind, love, and beauty that inspires Zanoni, in Bulwer's novel of that name.
Adonais, title of Percy Bysshe Shelley's elegy upon John Keats, written in 1821.
A'donbec el Hakim, the physician, a disguise assumed by Saladin, who visits sir Kenneth's sick squire, and cures him of a fever.—Sir W. Scott, The Talisman (time, Richard I.).
Ado'nis, a beautiful youth, beloved by Venus and Proser'pina, who quarrelled about the possession of him. Jupiter, to settle the dispute, decided that the boy should spend six months with Venus in the upper world and six with Proserpina in the lower. Adonis was gored to death by a wild boar in a hunt.
Shakespeare has a poem called Venus and Adonis. Shelley calls his elegy on the poet Keats Adona'is, under the idea that the untimely death of Keats resembled that of Adonis.
(Adonis is an allegory of the sun, which is six months north of the horizon, and six months south. Thammuz is the same as Adonis, and so is Osiris).