The son and successor of Philadelphus, the young King Ptolemy III., Euergetes, continued the literary traditions of the parental court. Soon after his father's death, he married the Princess Berenice II. of Cyrene, a young lady of beauty and spirit, who had already experienced the corruption of the court life of the day. Demetrius the Fair had been sent from Macedon to obtain her kingdom with her hand, but, while she was waiting to be of marriageable age, he had beguiled himself by intriguing with her mother. Berenice, in consequence, had him put to death. Doubtless her marriage with the young King of Egypt was a political alliance, but it was based also on mutual liking and appears to have turned out well. This reign of Euergetes and Berenice is, in fact, the one reign of the Ptolemies in which neither rival wives nor mistresses agitated the court. Information concerning this important period is meagre; we know, however, that no sooner had the bride entered upon her new happiness than the bridegroom was called away to Syria to avenge the horrid murder of his sister, also named Berenice, who had been wedded to the old King Antiochus Theos on condition that the latter repudiated his former wife Laodice and her children. But Laodice got the aged king again into her power; and she forthwith poisoned him and had her son proclaimed king. Her party in Antioch at once rose up against the new Egyptian queen and murdered her and her infant child. Queen Berenice, upon the departure of her husband, consecrated a lock of her hair in the temple of Aphrodite, with a prayer for his safe return. The lock mysteriously disappeared, and the philosopher Conon, happening just at that time to discover a new constellation, declared that the lock of Berenice's hair had been set among the stars. Callimachus, one of the court poets, seized this occasion to compose a poem entitled the _Lock of Berenice_,--preserved in Catullus's elegant Latin version,--celebrating the accession to the constellations of this lock of hair, which, according to the conceit of the poet, notwithstanding its high honor, wishes that it had never been severed from Berenice's fair head.