Hellenistic Astronomers Reimaged Coma Star Cluster as Berenice’s Hair

Summary: Hellenistic astronomers reimaged the Coma Star Cluster as Berenice’s Hair, a celestial placement of a real queen’s votive offering.

depiction of Coma Berenices (top) as a constellation on renowned Southern Dutch cartographer and cosmographer Gerardus Mercator’s celestial globe of 1551: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Hellenistic astronomers reimaged the Coma Star Cluster as Berenice’s Hair (Coma Berenices) by removing the shimmery nebula from mythical Leo the Lion’s tail in order to honor a contemporaneous queen’s votive offering.

Conon of Samos (ca. 280-ca. 222 BCE), the court astronomer of King Ptolemy III Euergetes (284-222 BCE), is credited with reimaging the fluffy tuft hovering over Constellation Leo the Lion’s tail. The Greek astronomer and mathematician equated the starry cluster with a missing votive offering, the shorn, amber gold tresses of Queen Berenice II of Egypt (ca. 267-221 BCE), his king’s consort. In Greek mythology, the miraculous transformation of the queen’s sacrificial tressings into a celestial configuration exemplified a catasterism (Ancient Greek: καταστερισμός, katasterismós, “star legend”; from καταστερίζω, katasterízō, “to place among the stars”; from κατά, katá, “down” + ἀστήρ,astḗr, “star”).

The Third Syrian War (246-241 BCE) provided the context for Queen Berenice II’s votive offering. The Syrian Wars were waged as a series of six wars, beginning in 274 BCE and ending in 168 BCE, between two Hellenistic kingdoms, the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt and the Seleucid Empire of Babylonia and the Near East. Ptolemy III Euergetes (Ancient Greek: Πτολεμαῖος Εὐεργέτης, Ptolemaĩos Euergétēs "Ptolemy the Benefactor") inherited involvement in the Syrian Wars as successor of his father, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (Ancient Greek: Φιλάδελφος, Philádelphos, “Brother Loving”)(ca. 308-January 246).

Influential Hellenistic Period (323-31 BCE) poet Callimachus of Cyrene (ca. 310/305-ca. 240 BCE) crafted a contemporaneous account of the catasteristic action in his Aetia (Ancient Greek: Αἴτια, "Causes"). The four-book collection of elegiac poems survives as tattered papyrus fragments. The Lock of Berenice (Ancient Greek: Βερενίκης πλόκαμος) is transmitted as Fragment 110, with a medley of complete, incomplete and missing verses in the Greek original. The last extant verse is line 94.

The Greek original of Fragment 110 and its English translation are available online via Dickinson College Commentaries. Susan Stephens, Sara Hart Kimball Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics at Stanford University, authored the fragment’s peer-reviewed and edited commentary.

Callimachus’ poem is a monologue, stated from the perspective of the lock of Berenice’s hair. The poem recounts the queen’s promise of the lock as a votive offering, dedicated to all the gods, upon the safe return of King Ptolemy III from war. Line seven acknowledges Conon as discoverer of the queen’s lock of hair in the sky.

Queen Berenice II placed her “fair lock” in the temple of deified Arsinoë II (316-ca. 270/260 BCE), consort of King Ptolemy II Philadelphus, at Cape Zephyrion, Cyprus. Callimachus also refers to Queen Arsinoë II as Zephyritis, the epithet associated with her worship as Arsinoe/Aphrodite of Fair Sailing, at Cape Zephyrion.

The poem notes the separation anxiety experienced by the rest of the queen’s hair. The votive lock’s mysterious disappearance during the night deepens the sorrow. The lock explains the disappearance as undertaken by Cypris, Aphrodite’s epithet honoring her birth on the island of Cyprus, so that “. . . counted among the many stars, but I also would shine . . .” (Susan Stephens, Fr. 110).

Sadly, the lock of hair does not favor placement “as a new star among the ancient ones.” The queen’s votive offering grieves at no longer touching “that head . . . from which, when she was still a young girl, I drank many simple (oil) . . .” (Susan Stephens, Fr. 110).

Late Roman Republic poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (ca. 84-ca. 54 BCE) adapted Callimachus’ poem into Latin. Known as Poem 66, his adaptation comprises 94 complete lines. American Latin scholar Elmer Truesdell Merrill (Jan. 1, 1860-April 19, 1936) described the poem’s theme as “a compound of court tradition and of astronomical tradition” and considered Catullus’ translation as “complex and artificial.” He wondered: “Whether the obscurity of some passages in it is due to lack of care on the part of the translator, or to an excessive fidelity to the original, cannot be determined . . .” (Catullus, page 166).

Dutch freelance exhibition curator and independent scholar Branko F. van Oppen de Ruiter has noted “several considerable deviations between Catullus and Callimachus” (Berenice II Euergetis, Chapter 4, page 71). For example, Callimachus’ last couplet (lines 94a-94b), which survives as a scant fragment, does not appear in Catullus’ Poem 66.

Dutch celestial cartography historian Elly Dekker (born 1943) notes that, since its introduction ca. 250 BCE by Conon of Samos, Queen Berenice II’s starry lock of hair has been “well attested in literary sources” (Illustrating the Phaenomena, page 76). She points out, however, that the first known images of Coma Berenices date only to the 16th century.

Interestingly, the depictions of Queen Berenice II’s hair in the 16th century upgrade the shimmery nebula from an asterism located within the borders of Constellation Leo the Lion to its own constellation. German celestial and geographic cartographer Caspar Vopel (1511-1561) presented the first-known image of Berenice’s Hair on his printed globe of 1536. In 1551, renowned 16th-century Southern Dutch cartographer and cosmographer Gerardus Mercator (March 5, 1512-Dec. 2, 1594) included the Hellenistic Period’s historical catasterism in his celestial globe of 1551.

In May 1922, the International Astronomical Union’s inaugural General Assembly officially recognized Coma Berenices as a constellation. Coma Berenices enjoys unique status as the only one of the 88 modern constellations that honors a historical personage.

The takeaway for Hellenistic astronomers’ reimaged Coma Star Cluster as Berenice’s Hair (Coma Berenices) is that the Hellenistic Period’s catasterism, or placement in the stars, of a contemporary event culminated in the acceptance of Coma Berenices in the 20th century as the only modern constellation with a historical figure as namesake.

portrait bust (second half of third century BCE) of Queen Berenice II; Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, Saal des Alexander, Munich, Germany; 2007-02-08: Bibi Saint-Pol, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

depiction of Coma Berenices (top) as a constellation on renowned Southern Dutch cartographer and cosmographer Gerardus Mercator’s celestial globe of 1551: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Virgo_et_Coma_Berenices_-_Mercator.jpeg

portrait bust (second half of third century BCE) of Queen Berenice II; Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, Saal des Alexander, Munich, Germany; 2007-02-08: Bibi Saint-Pol, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Head_Berenike_II_Glyptothek_Munich.jpg

For further information:

Bing, Peter. “Posidippus and the Admiral: Kallikrates of Samos in the Epigrams of the Milan Posidippus Papyrus (P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309).” The Scroll and the Marble: Studies in Reading and Reception in Hellenistic Poetry: 243-244. Ann Arbor MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2009.

Condos, Theony. “The Katasterismoi (Part I).” Astronomical Society of the Pacific Leaflet, vol. 10, no. 496 (November 1970): 369-376.
Available via Harvard ADSABS (NASA Astrophysics Data System Abstracts) @ http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1970ASPL...10..361C

Condos, Theony. “The Katasterismoi (Part II).” Astronomical Society of the Pacific Leaflet, vol. 10, no. 497 (October 1970): 361-368.
Available via Harvard ADSABS (NASA Astrophysics Data System Abstracts) @ http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1970ASPL...10..369C

Dekker, Elly. “Caspar Vopel’s Ventures in Sixteenth-Century Celestial Cartography.” Imago Mundi: The International Journal for the History of Cartography, vol. 62, issue 2 (2010): 161-190.
Available via Atlas Coelestis @ http://www.atlascoelestis.com/Vopel%202010%20base.htm
Available via Taylor & Francis Online @ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03085691003747126

Dekker, Elly. Illustrating the Phaenomena: Celestial Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Harder, Annette, ed. Callimachus Aetia: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary. Volume I: Introduction, Text, and Translation. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Marriner, Derdriu. “Coma Star Cluster Formerly Fluffed Leo the Lion’s Tail.” Earth and Space News. Wednesday, May 22, 2019.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2019/05/coma-star-cluster-formerly-fluffed-leo.html

Merrill, Elmer Truesdell, ed. Catullus. College Series of Latin Authors. Boston MA; New York NY; Chicago IL; London, England; Atlanta GA; Dallas TX; Columbus OH; San Francisco CA: Ginn and Company, 1893.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/catulluseditedby00catuuoft/

Nagy, Gregory. “About Three Fair-Haired Egyptian Queens.” Classical Inquiries. Aug. 19, 2015.
Available via Harvard University Center for Hellenic Studies (CHS) @ https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/about-three-fair-haired-egyptian-queens/

Nagy, Gregory. “Classical Variations on a Story About an Egyptian Queen in Love.” Classical Inquiries. July 15, 2015.
Available @ https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/classical-variations-on-a-story-about-an-egyptian-queen-in-love/

Prairie, Sandy. “Elmer Truesdell Merrill.” Find A Grave Memorial 34262500. Feb. 27, 2009.
Available @ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/34262500/elmer-truesdell-merrill

Stephens, Susan. “The Lock of Berenice. Fr. 110.” Callimachus: Aetia. Carlisle PA: Dickinson College Commentaries, 2015.
Available @ http://dcc.dickinson.edu/callimachus-aetia/book-4/lock-berenice

Van Oppen de Ruiter, Branko F. Berenice II Euergetis: Essays in Early Hellenistic Queenship. Queenship and Power Series. New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.