The Rev. Mr. Mean published a few years since, some remarks on the Cassandra, and some specimens of a translation which he does not appear to have completed, but which if executed in the spirit of the sketch which he published, would be deserving of the attention of the public *.

The late lamented Lord Royston, whose talents would have rendered him an ornament to literature and to his country, published a complete translation of Lycophron, executed by himself in a very superior manner, so as to illustrate many of the obscurities inherent in the text of that author.

See British Critic for August, 1801.

CHAP. XXII.

Callimachus.

CALLIMACHUS is reported by Strabo to have been a native of Cyrene in Africa, he was descended it is supposed from Battus, the king and founder of Cyrene, and flourished in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus.

Callimachus was esteemed one of the most eminent of the seven poets, who composed a constellation of men of genius at Alexandria, and who were called the Pleiades. He was also a grammarian, and established a school in which Apollonius Rhodius was his disciple. He was appointed president of the celebrated library at Alexandria*, and continued in that office under Ptolemy Philadelphus and his successor Euergetes who began to reign 246 years, before Christ.

* Fabricius.

Berenice the Queen of Euergetes was distinguished for her conjugal affection, which led her to make a vow to consecrate her hair, if her husband should return safe from his expedition into Syria. She accomplished her promise on the desired event, by offering her tresses at a temple which had been built by Ptolemy Philadelphus, at Zephyrium, a promontory in Cyprus, in honour of Arsinoe, under the name of the Zephyrian Venus. The hair being lost, the astronomer Conon immortalized the story, by affirming that the seven stars in the tail of the lion which had not previously been reckoned in any constellation, were formed from the locks placed in the heavens, and Callimachus composed an elegy upon the occasion, now extant only in the translation of Catullus.

Of the other poetical productions of Callimachus which were numerous, a few hymns only, and epigrams remain. He He appears to have composed a history of Sacred Rites, of which Calius Rhodiginus laments the loss, and which probably would have been a work of great interest if it had been preserved.

Callimachus having lived in the period at which the Septuagint version of the Scriptures was made, and being led by his office

of librarian to attend to it, had peculiar opportunities of becoming acquainted with the inspired writings, but though in his elegant hymns there are some vestiges of sacred truth, there is but a slight presumption of his having borrowed from them.

He speaks of the builders of Babel as being the descendants of Noah after the flood, and as the persons who peopled the earth, remarking that

sage

The sons of Cronus ascertained by lot
Their several realms on earth *.

It may be observed, that there is a pasin Homer in which Neptune states, that the three sons of Saturn divided all things between them. Bryant conceives this to have reference to the same account, though the three Gods took the Heavens, the Sea, and Tartarus among them, and Neptune's statement is, that the Earth and Olympus were left in common; some in the same passage have discovered an allusion to a Trinity. The address and Prosopopoeia in the Psalm xxiv. 7. resembles a passage in the first Hymn to Apollo.

Ύμνος εις τον Δία, 1. 61.

Iliad, 1. v. 187. 190-3. Bryant's Mythol. vol. iii. p. 15.

66

"Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be

ye lift up ye everlasting doors, and the "King of Glory shall come in." The imagery in Callimachus, though probably borrowed from this, is far inferior, "fall back ye "bars of the gates, recoil ye bolts, for the "God is now not far distant *."

In a passage in the hymn to Jove, Callimachus styles the god πηλογόνων ἐλατῆρα, him who drives out the earth-born, or those formed of the earth, which it is thought might allude to the first formation of man from the earth, or to the story of the giants who rebelled against Jove. He also styles man, Promethean clay.

Callimachus reports, that love was the cause of Apollo's banishment, and some says Stillingfleet, have conjectured that the memory of Jacob's peregrination and service with Laban is preserved under the story +

An Epigram, left by this writer, shews that the poets, who lived under the patronage of Ptolemy, could exert their talents on a moral

Αυτοι νυν κατοχῆες ἀνακλίνεσθε πυλάων,

Αυταὶ δε κλῆιδες, ο γας θεος εκετι μακράν. L. 6. 7.

See also Isaiah vi. 4, and Spanheim observat. in Locum. + Nicolaus Frischlinus. annot. in Callim. Hymn, lib. i. 1. 72. Edit. Stephan.

† Ύμνος εις τον Απολ.