the name of the Cumaean Sibyl, who offered to Tarquinius Superbus nine books containing the Roman destinies, and demanded 300 pieces of gold as their price. The monarch disregarding her demand, she threw three of them into the fire, and returning, asked the same price for the remaining six; which being also denied, she burnt three more, and returning, demanded the same price for the three that were left. Tarquin, astonished at her behaviour, consulted the pontiffs, who advised him to buy them. These books were so highly esteemed, that two magistrates were created to consult Amalthea them upon extraordinary occasions.

in Pagan Mythology, daughter of Melissus, king of Crete, and nurse of Jupiter, whom she fed with honey and goats' milk. According to others, Amalthea was a goat, which Jupiter translated into the sky, with her two kids, and gave one of her horns to the daughters of Melissus, as a reward for their care over his infant years. This horn had the peculiar property of furnishing them with whatever they wished for, and was thence called the cornu copiae, or horn of plenty.

AMALTHÆUS, JEROME, JOHN BAPTISTA, and CORNEILLE, three celebrated Latin poets of Italy, who flourished in the 16th century. Their compositions were printed at Amsterdam in 1685. One of the prettiest pieces in that collection is an epigram on two children, of extraordinary beauty; though each of them was deprived of an eye:

Lumine Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro: Et poterat forma vincere uterque Deos. Parve puer, lumen quod habes concede sorori; Sic tu causis Amor, sic erit illa Venus.