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universal love and admiration, there wasn't really another starring part for her husband, except Lucifer.

ALINE TEMPLETON Last Act Of All, 1995

Mephistopheles Mephistopheles is the evil spirit to whom Faust in German legend sold his soul, especially as represented in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (c.1590) and Goethe's Faust (1808-32). Mephistopheles entraps Faust with wit, charm, and rationality. His name, and the adjective 'Mephistophelean', are often used to describe afiendishbut urbane tempter.

When it was over he pulled my head round so that he could see my face and said, 'You O.K. kid?' I can remember the tone now. He was obviously happy and the Mephistophelian smile had given place to an expression that was almost boyish.

ROBERTSON DAviES World of Wonders, 1975

Prince of Darkness The Prince of Darkness is another name for the Devil or Satan.

Satan Satan (meaning 'the adversary') is the most common name given to the supreme evil spirit, the Devil. The name is used to suggest utter evil or wickedness.

0 my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1886

But the deeper the depression of the rest, young Rupert went about Satan's work with a smile on his eye and a song on his lip.

ANTHONY HOPE The Prisoner of Zenda, 1894

Dictators and Tyrants

Many of history's dictators and tyrants remain bywords for cruel and

ruthless behaviour. • See also Evil, Leaders, Ruthlessness.

Idi Amin Idi Amin (b. 1925) was a Ugandan soldier and head of state 1971-9. In 19 71 he overthrew President Milton Obote and seized power. He presided over a regime characterized by brutality and repression, during which Uganda's Asian population was expelled and thousands of his political opponents murdered. Amin was overthrown in 1979 and fled the country.

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burdens. This idea of having something difficult to accomplish is obviously closely related to the theme of Perseverance, and to that of a Problem, both covered elsewhere.

Atlas Atlas was one of the Titans in Greek mythology, punished for rebelling against Zeus by being made to support the heavens on his shoulders. The image of Atlas holding up the sky, or sometimes the earth itself, is a common one in art and literature. The name can be applied to anyone who is forced to bear a heavy burden.

I am like a spy who has signed a covenant of perpetual secrecy, I am like someone who is the only person in the world that knows the truth and yet is forbidden to utter it. And this truth weighs more than the universe, so that I am like Atlas bowed down forever beneath a burden that cracks the bones and solidifies the blood.

LOUIS DE BERNIÈRES Captain Corelli's Mandolin, 1994

Augean Stables In Greek mythology, the stables of the king of Augeas housed a very large herd of oxen and had never been cleaned out. Hercules undertook the task of cleaning them as one of his twelve labours. He achieved this task by diverting two rivers, the Alpheus and the Peneus, through the stables. The phrase 'cleaning the Augean stables' is often now used to mean not merely cleaning up a mess but putting right a corrupt or morally unacceptable situation. • See special entry D HERCULES on p. 182.

'What are you doing here, Warshawski?' 'Cleaning the Augean stables, Todd. You can call me Hercules. Although I think he had some help. In a way I've outperformed him.'

SARA PARETSKY Guardian Angel, 1992

I am convinced we need fundamental constitutional reform at all levels. We must cleanse the Augean stables at Westminster of the mess of patronage and special interests which do so much to discredit democracy.

EMMA NICHOLSON in The Observer, 1995

Excalibur Excalibur was King Arthur's sword. It had been embedded in a stone and Arthur was able to draw it out when no one else could move it, thus proving himself the rightful king of England.

The wall had a surprising grip on it. It was like the whole structure of that wall had settled down around this useless, forgotten piece of iron. I said to Valentina: 'This is like trying to extract the sword Excalibur from the stone!'

ROSE TREMAIN The Way I Found Her, 1998

Hercules In Greek and Roman mythology, Hercules (called Heracles by the Greeks) was a hero of superhuman strength and courage who performed twelve immense tasks or 'labours' imposed on him by Eurystheus, King of Argos, including the cleaning of the Augean stables. He was usually depicted with a lion-skin, club, and bow. Most allusions to Hercules are in the context of performing a formidably difficult task. • See special entry n HERCULES on p. 182.

Hercules!

ALDOUS HUXLEY Point Counter Point, 1928

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Charles produced the piece of ammonitiferous rock he had brought for Ernistina, who put down her fireshield and attempted to hold it, and could not, and forgave Charles everything for such a labour of Hercules, and then was mock-angry with him for endangering life and limb.

JOHN FOWLES The French Lieutenant's Woman, 1969

These cases, and thousands more in scores of other countries, are detailed in Index on Censorship, the bimonthly magazine which has just celebrated (though that hardly seems an appropriate word) its 25th anniversary. The magazine has a Lilliputian circulation and a Herculean task: winning for the people of the world one of the most basic of human rights, the freedom of expression.

The Guardian, 1997

Old Man of the Sea The Old Man of the Sea is a character in 'Sinbad the Sailor', one of the tales in the Arabian Nights. He persuades Sinbad to carry him on his shoulders, whereupon he twines his legs round him, so that Sinbad cannot dislodge him. Sinbad is forced to carry him on his shoulders for many days and nights, until at last he gets the Old Man drunk with wine and manages to shake him off. The term is used to denote a tiresome, heavy burden.

Well, we can't have it, so don't let us grumble but shoulder our bundles and trudge along as cheerfully as Marmee does. I'm sure Aunt March is a regular Old Man of the Sea to me, but I suppose when I've learned to carry her without complaining, she will tumble off, or get so light that I shan't mind her.

LOUISA M. ALCOTT Little Women, 1868

Pelion on Ossa In Greek mythology, Mount Pelion in Thessaly was held to be the home of the centaurs, and the giants were said to have piled Pelion on top of Mount Ossa (or sometimes Ossa on Pelion) in their attempt to scale Mount Olympus and destroy the gods. To 'pile Pelion on Ossa' is to add difficulty to difficulty.

Whether one thinks the relevant ministers should have gone or stayed, these have been abject performances. Their effect has been to make mountains of molehills (except in the case of the ERM, where it was more a case of piling Pelion on Ossa).

The Sunday Telegraph, 1994

That was final enough in itself, but within minutes a fax arrived from Capitaine Lapollet. If such a thing was possible, it made things worse by rubbing salt into Timberlake's near-mortal wounds. It said the late Comte de Gaillmont's group was A, which meant that he could be Jean-Louis's father. It didn't mean he was his father, but this last blow was piling Pelion upon Ossa.

MAX MARQUIS Written in Blood, 1995

Sisyphus In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king of Corinth, punished in Hades for his misdeeds in life by being condemned to the eternal task of rolling a huge stone to the top of a hill. Every time he approached the summit, the stone slipped and rolled down to the bottom again. An endless and fruitless task can be described as Sisyphean. >See special entry a HADES on p. 172.

Trinity College had undertaken the Sisyphean task of repairing all of its historic Front Square.

JOHN BRADY A Stone of the Heart, 1988

Is that the only future humanity has, to push the boulder, like Sisyphus, up to the top

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of a hill, only to see it roll to the bottom again? ISAAC ASIMOV Forward the Foundation, 1994

Ralph glanced round at a profusion of books and papers equalling that of the front room, and shrugged eloquently. 'You can see how things are. I feel like Sisyphus trying to keep up with the projects and my assistant only keeps the stone from backsliding a bit!

DEBORAH CROMBIE Dreaming of the Bones, 1996

sorcerer's apprentice The Sorcerer's Apprentice is the title of an orchestral composition by Paul Dukas (1897), after a ballad by Goethe (1797). It was one of the pieces used in the 1940 Disney animated film Fantasia. According to the story on which Dukas's work is based, the sorcerer's apprentice finds a spell to make objects do work for him but is then unable to cancel it. In the Disney version, Mickey Mouse is the apprentice and the spell causes a broom to keep fetching buckets of water from a well. The term is used to describe a person who instigates but is unable to control a process.

How would Emily put what she felt into words? She would describe this, perhaps, in terms of that image of her sweeping, sweeping, the sorcerer's apprentice put to work in a spiteful garden against floods of dying leaves that she could never clean away no matter how hard she tried.

DORIS LESSiNc Memoirs of a Survivor, 1974