The poem of Catullus has some faults, which may be fairly attributed to his pedantic model—a certain obscurity in point of diction, and that ostentatious display of erudition, which characterized the works of the Alexandrian poets. The Greek original, however, being lost, except two distichs, it is impossible to institute an accurate comparison; but the Latin appears to be considerably more diffuse than the Greek. One distich, which is still extant in the _Scholia_ on Apollonius, has been expanded by Catullus into three lines; and the following preserved by Theon has been dilated into four:— “Ἡ δε Κονων μ’ ἐβλεψεν εν ῆερι τον Βερενικης Βοστρυχον, ὁν κεινη πασιν ἐθηκε Θεοις(508)” “Idem me ille Conon cœlesti lumine vidit E Bereniceo vertice cæsariem, Fulgentem clare; quam multis illa Deorum, Lævia protendens brachia, pollicita est.” Here the three words τον Βερενικης βοστρυχον have been extended into “E Bereniceo vertice cæsariem fulgentem,” and the single word ἐθηκε has formed a whole Latin line, “Lævia protendens brachia, pollicita est(509).” The Latin poem, like its Greek original, is in elegiac verse, and is supposed to be spoken by the constellation called _Coma Berenices_. It relates how Berenice, the queen and sister of Ptolemy, (Euergetes,) vowed the consecration of her locks to the immortals, provided her husband was restored to her, safe and successful, from a military expedition on which he had proceeded against the Assyrians. The king having returned according to her wish, and her shorn locks having disappeared, it is supposed by one of those fictions which poetry alone can admit, that Zephyrus, the son of Aurora, and brother of Memnon, had carried them up to heaven, and thrown them into the lap of Venus, by whom they were set in the sky, and were soon afterwards discovered among the constellations by Conon, a court astronomer. In order to relish this poem, or to enter into its spirit, we must read it imbued as it were with the belief and manners of the ancient Egyptians. The locks of Berenice might be allowed to speak and desire, because they had been converted into stars, which, by an ancient philosophic system, were supposed to be possessed of animation and intelligence. Similar honours had been conferred on the crown of Ariadne and the ship of Isis, and the belief in such transformations was at least of that popular or traditionary nature which fitted them for the purposes of poetry. The race, too, of the Egyptian Ptolemies, traced their lineage to Jupiter, which would doubtless facilitate the reception of the locks of Berenice among the heavenly orbs. Adulation, however, it must be confessed, could not be carried higher; the beautiful locks of Berenice, though metamorphosed into stars, are represented as regretting their former happy situation, and prefer adorning the brow of Berenice, to blazing by night in the front of heaven, under the steps of immortals, or reposing by day in the bosom of Tethys:—