Sebastian, brother of Alonso, king of Naples, in The Tempest (1609).
Sebastian, father of Valentine and Alice.—Beaumont and Fletcher, Mons. Thomas (1619).
Sebastian (Don), king of Portugal, is defeated in battle and taken prisoner by the Moors (1574). He is saved from death by Dorax, a noble Portuguese, then a renegade in the court of the emperor of Barbary. The train being dismissed, Dorax takes off his turban, assumes his Portuguese dress, and is recognized as Alonzo of Alcazar.—Dryden, Don Sebastian (1690).
The quarrel and reconcilation of Sebastian and Dorax [alias Alonzo of Alcazar] is a masterly copy from a similar scene between Brutus and Cassius [in Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar].—R. Chambers, English Literature, i. 380.
Don Sebastian, a name of terror to Moorish children.
Nor shall Sebastian’s formidable name
Be longer used to still the crying babe.
Dryden, Don Sebastian (1690).
Sebastian I. of Brazil, who fell in the battle of Alcazarquebir in 1578. The legend is that he is not dead, but is patiently biding the fulness of time, when he will return, and make Brazil the chief kingdom of the earth. (See Barbarossa.)
Sebastoc´rator (The), the chief officer of state in the empire of Greece. Same as Protosebastos.—Sir W. Scott, Count Robert of Paris (time, Rufus).
Sebile (2 syl.), la Dame du Lac, in the romance called Perceforest. Her castle was surrounded by a river, on which rested so thick a fog that no one could see across it. Alexander the Great abode with her a fortnight to be cured of his wounds, and King Arthur was the result of this amour (vol. i. 42).
Secret Hill (The). Ossian said to Oscar, when he resigned to him the command of the morrow’s battle, “Be thine the secret hill to-night,” referring to the Gaelic custom of the commander of an army retiring to a secret hill the night before a battle, to hold communion with the ghosts of departed heroes.—Ossian, Cathlin of Clutha.