Matters were in this state in the age of Mimnermus, who was contemporary with Solon, and was the most celebrated elegiac poet of the Greeks. Hence, from his time every poem in that measure, whatever was the subject, came to be denominated elegy. The mixed species of verse, however, was always considered essential, so that the complaint of Bion on the death of Adonis, or that of Moschus on the loss of Bion, is hardly accounted such, being written in a different sort of measure. In the strict acceptation of the term, scarcely any Greek elegy has descended to us entire, except perhaps a few lines by Callimachus on the death of Heraclitus. This elegy of Catullus may be considered as a sort of introduction to that which follows it. Hortalus, to whom it is addressed, had requested him to translate from Callimachus the poem _De Coma Berenices_. He apologizes for the delay which had taken place in complying with the wishes of his friend, on account of the grief he had experienced from the premature death of his brother, for whom he bursts forth into this pathetic lamentation:— “Nunquam ego te, vitâ frater amabilior, Aspiciam posthac; at certe semper amabo, Semper mœsta tuâ carmina morte canam; Qualia sub densis ramorum concinit umbris Daulias, absumpti fata gemens Ityli.” This simile is taken from the 19th book of the Odyssey— “Ὡς δ’ ὁτε Πανδαρεου κουρη, χλωρηις αηδων, Καλον αειδησιν, έαρος νεον ἰσταμενοιο, Δενδρεων ἐν πεταλοισιν καθεζομενη πυκινοισιν Παιδ’ ολοφυρομενη Ιτυλον φιλον,” and it appears in turn to have been the foundation of Virgil’s celebrated comparison:— “Qualis populeâ mœrens Philomela sub umbrâ Amissos queritur fœtus,” &c. This simile has been beautifully varied and adorned by Moschus(504) and Quintus Calaber(505), among the Greeks; and among the modern Italians by Petrarch, in his exquisite sonnet on the death of Laura:— “Qual Rossignuol che si soave piagne,” &c. and by Naugerius, in his ode _Ad Auroram_, “Nunc ab umbroso simul esculeto, Daulias late queritur: querelas Consonum circa nemus, et jocosa reddit imago.” 66. _De Coma Berenices_, is the poem alluded to in the former elegy: it is translated from a production of Callimachus, of which only two distichs remain, one preserved by Theon, a scholiast, on Aratus, and the other in the _Scholia_ on Apollonius Rhodius(506). Callimachus was esteemed by all antiquity as the finest elegiac poet of Greece, or at least as next in merit to Mimnermus. He belonged to the poetic school which flourished at Alexandria from the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus to that of Ptolemy Physcon, and which still sheds a lustre over the dynasty of the Lagides, in spite of the crimes and personal deformities with which their names have been sarcastically associated.