ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Callimachus’ Lock of Berenice was composed as part of a program of imagery reflecting all the concerns of the queen, his young compatriot from Cyrene. In analyzing the poem, the focus will be on the rhetorical strategies devised by Callimachus to propagate a fantasy arising from female experience; it is these, responding to a woman's vision and yet arising from a man's perspective, that lend the poem its unusual and even revolutionary character. Yet in choosing a mythical parallel that involves heterosexual love, Callimachus leaves open the possibility that the romantic allusion may reflect, on some level of consciousness, the lock's desire for a male lover. In order to draw additional attention to the queen's sacrifice and so to increase its value as propaganda, the court decided upon the ploy of the lock's disappearance and claim of divine intervention.
