me 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.

The reigns of Ptolemy Soter, Philadelphus, and Euergetes, with their
brilliant queens, mark the golden age of Alexandria. In Ptolemy IV.,
Philopator, we notice the curious and rapid change of the great family
of the Lagidae into debauchees, dilettanti, drunkards, dolts. This
sovereign was a feeble and colorless personage who was completely under
the control of his minister Sosibius, whom Polybius speaks of as "a wily
old baggage and most mischievous to the kingdom; and first he planned
the murder of Lysimachus, who was the son of Arsinoe, daughter of
Lysimachus, and of Ptolemy; secondly, of Magas, the son of Ptolemy and
Berenice, daughter of Magas; thirdly, of Berenice, daughter of Ptolemy
and mother of Philopator; fourthly, of Cleomenes the Spartan; and
fifthly, of Arsinoe, daughter of Berenice, the king's sister and wife."
Surely a criminal of the deepest dye, at whose hands the princesses of
Alexandria suffered untold horrors! During his later years, the king was
under complete subjection to his mistress Agathoclea and her brother
Agathocles. The Queen Arsinoe, the mother of the infant heir to the
throne, who was young and vigorous, was regarded throughout Egypt as the
natural protectress and regent of the young Ptolemy when his father's
life was on the wane; but Agathocles and his sister secretly murdered
her, and, when the king died, presented the prince to the populace and
read a forged will in which they themselves were made his guardians
during his minority. But the people learned of the sad fate of Queen
Arsinoe, and her ill treatment roused the indignation of the populace;
thereupon followed one of the mob riots for which Alexandria was noted.
Polybius gives a dramatic description of the great riot and tells how
the wicked regent Agathocles, his sister Agathoclea, and his mother
Oenanthe, were seized by the multitude and torn in pieces, limb by limb,
while yet they lived.

When the young King Ptolemy V., Epiphanes, grew up, he took for his