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Asmodeus
[the destroyer]. The demon of vanity and dress, called
in the Talmud “the king of devils.”
The Asmodeus of domestic peace
(in the Book of Tobit). Asmodeus falls in love with Sara, daughter
of Raguel, and causes the death of seven husbands in succession, each
on his bridal night. After her marriage to Tobit, he was driven into
Egypt by a charm, made by Tobias of the heart and liver of a fish burnt
on perfumed ashes, and being pursued was taken prisoner and bound.
Better pleased
Than Asmodeus with the fishy fume
That drove him, though enamoured, from the spouse Of Tobit's son,
and with a vengeance sent
From Media post to Egypt, there fast bound.
Milton: Paradise
Lost , iv. 167–71.
The companion of Don Cléofas, in The Devil on Two Sticks. (Chap. iii.)
Asmodeus flight.
Don Cléofas, catching hold of his companion's cloak, is perched on
the steeple of St. Salvador. Here the foul fiend stretches out his
hand, and the roofs of all the houses open in a moment, to show the Don
what is going on privately in each respective dwelling.
“Could the reader take an Asmodeus-flight, and, waving open all
roofs and privacies, look down from the roof of Notre Dame, what a
Paris were it!”
—Carlyle: French Revolution II., vi. chap. vi.
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894 More on Asmodeus from Infoplease:
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