Melchior, one of the three kings of Cologne. He was the “Wise Man of the East” who offered to the infant Jesus gold, the emblem of royalty. The other two were Gaspar and Balthazar. Melchior means “king of light.”
Melchior, a monk attending the black priest of St. Paul’s.—Sir W. Scott, Anne of Geierstein (time, Edward IV.).
Melchior (i.e. Melchior Pfinzing), a German poet who wrote the Teuerdank, an epic poem which has the kaiser Maximilian (son of Frederick III.) for its hero. This poem was the Orlando Furioso of the Germans.
Sat the poet Melchior, singing kaiser Maximilian’s praise.
Longfellow, Nuremberg.
Melea´ger, son of Althæa, who was doomed to live while a certain log remained unconsumed. Althæa kept the log for several years, but being one day angry with her son, she cast it on the fire, where it was consumed. Her son died at the same moment.—Ovid, Metam., viii. 4.
Sir John Davies uses this to illustrate the immortality of the soul. He says that the life of the soul does not depend on the body as Meleager’s life depended on the fatal brand.
Again, if by the body’s prop she stand—
If on the body’s life her life depend,
As Meleager’s on the fatal brand;
The body’s good she only would intend.
Reason, iii. (1622).
Melesig´enes (5 syl.). Homer is so called from the river Melês (2 syl.), in Asia Minor, on the banks of which some say he was born.
... various measured verse,
Æolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigēnês, thence Homer called,
Whose poem Phœbus challenged for his own.
Milton, Paradise Regained (1671).
Melema (Tito). Beautiful accomplished Greek adventurer who marries and is unfaithful to Romola. He dies by the hand of an old man who had been the benefactor of his infancy and youth, and whom he had basely deserted and ignored.—George Eliot, Romola.