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].