Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/100

88 never, in the nature of things or measures, be popular. And even supposing the metre were more promising, it is undeniably against the dictates of good taste to make the revolting legend of Atys a familiar story to English readers of the ancient classics.

Curiosity, however, would dictate more acquaintance with "Berenice's Lock of Hair," a poem sent, as has been already stated, by Catullus to Hortalus, and purporting to be the poet's translation of a court poem of his favourite model, the Alexandrian poet Callimachus. The metre of both is elegiac; but of the original only two brief fragments remain—so brief, indeed, that they fail to test the faithfulness of the translator. The subject, it should seem, was the fate of a tress which Berenice, according to Egyptian tables of affinity the lawful wife and queen of Ptolemy Euergetes, king of Egypt, although she was his sister, dedicated to Venus Zephyritis as an offering for the safety of her liege lord upon an expedition to which he was summoned against the Assyrians, and which sadly interfered with his honeymoon. On his return the vow was paid in due course: the lock, however, shortly disappeared from the temple; and thereupon Conon, the court astronomer (of whom Virgil speaks in his third eclogue as one of the two most famous mathematicians of his time), invented the flattering account that it had been changed into a constellation. So extravagant a compliment would naturally kindle the rivalry of the courtly and erudite Alexandrian poet; and the result was soon forthcoming in an elegiac poem, supposed to be addressed to her mis-