The conquering force of unresisted steel?”
The Coma Earini of Statius[510], is a poem of the same description as the Coma Berenices. It is written in a style of sufficiently elegant versification; but what in Callimachus is a courtly, though perhaps rather extravagant compliment, is in Statius a servile and disgusting adulation of the loathsome monster, whose vices he so disgracefully flattered. Antonio Sebastiani, a Latin poet of modern Italy, has imitated Catullus, by celebrating the locks of a princess of San-Severino. The beauty and virtues of his heroine had excited the admiration of earth, and the love of the gods, but with these the jealousy of the goddesses. By their influence, a malady evoked from Styx threatens the life of the princess, and occasions the loss of her hair. The gods, indignant at this base conspiracy, commission Iris to convey the fallen locks to the sky, and to restore to the princess, along with health, her former freshness and beauty.
68. Ad Manlium. The principal subject of this elegy, is the story of Laodamia: The best parts, however, are those lines in which the poet laments his brother, which are truly elegiac—
“Tu, mea, tu moriens, fregisti commoda, frater;
Tecum unà tota est nostra sepulta domus;
Omnia tecum unà perierunt gaudia nostra,
Quæ tuus in vita dulcis alebat amor:
Quojus ego interitu totâ de mente fugavi
Hæc studia, atque omnes delicias animi.”
Catullus seems to have entertained a sincere affection for his brother, and to have deeply deplored his loss; hence he generally writes well when touching on this tender topic. Indeed, the only remaining elegy of Catullus worth mentioning, is that entitled Inferiæ ad Fratris Tumulum, which is another beautiful and affectionate tribute to the memory of this beloved youth. Vulpius had said, in a commentary on Catullus, that his brother died while accompanying him in his expedition with Memmius to Bithynia. This, however, is denied by Ginguené, who quotes two lines from the Inferiæ—