The Complete Poems of C.P. Cavafy - Daniel Mendelsohn

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      robes all of purple, a gleaming diadem,

      exceedingly costly jewels, and numerous

      servants and a retinue, his most expensive mounts,

      that he should appear in Rome as was befitting,

      like an Alexandrian Greek monarch.

      But the Lagid, who had come a mendicant,

      knew his business and refused it all;

      he ­didn’t need these luxuries at all.

      Dressed in worn old clothes, he humbly entered Rome,

      and found lodgings with a minor craftsman.

      And then he presented himself to the Senate

      as an ill-fortuned and impoverished man,

      that with greater success he might beg.

      [1910; 1916]

       Orophernes

      He, who on the four-drachma piece

      seems to have a smile on his face,

      on his beautiful, refined face,

      he is Orophernes, son of Ariarathes.

      A child, they chased him out of Cappadocia,

      from the great ancestral palace,

      and sent him away to grow up

      in Ionia, to be forgotten among foreigners.

      Ah, the exquisite nights of Ionia

      when fearlessly, and completely as a Greek,

      he came to know pleasure utterly.

      In his heart, an Asiatic still:

      but in his manners and in his speech a Greek,

      bedecked with turquoise, yet Greek-attired,

      his body scented with perfume of jasmine;

      and of Ionia’s beautiful young men

      the most beautiful was he, the most ideal.

      Later on, when the Syrians came

      to Cappadocia, and had made him king,

      he threw himself completely into his reign,

      that he might enjoy some novel pleasure each new day,

      that he might horde the gold and silver, avaricious,

      that over all of this he might exult, and gloat

      to see the heaped-up riches glittering.

      As for cares of state, administration—

      he ­didn’t know what was going on around him.

      The Cappadocians quickly threw him out.

      And so to Syria he fled, to the palace of

      Demetrius, to entertain himself and loll about.

      Still, one day some unaccustomed thoughts

      broke in on his total idleness:

      he remembered that through his mother, Antiochis,

      and through that ancient lady, Stratonice,

      he too descended from the Syrian crown,

      he too was very nearly a Seleucid.

      For a while he emerged from his lechery and drink,

      and ineptly, in a kind of daze,

      cast around for something he might plot,

      something he might do, something to plan,

      and failed miserably and came to nothing.

      His death must have been recorded somewhere and then lost.

      Or maybe history passed it by,

      and very rightly ­didn’t deign

      to notice such a trivial thing.

      He, who on the four-drachma piece

      left the charm of his lovely youth,

      a glimmer of his poetic beauty,

      a sensitive memento of an Ionian boy,

      he is Orophernes, son of Ariarathes.

      [1904; 1916]

       Alexandrian Kings

      The Alexandrians came out in droves

      to have a look at Cleopatra’s children:

      Caesarion, and also his little brothers,

      Alexander and Ptolemy, who for the first

      time were being taken to the Gymnasium,

      that they might proclaim them kings

      before the brilliant ranks of soldiers.

      Alexander: they declared him king

      of Armenia, of Media, of the Parthians.

      Ptolemy: they declared him king

      of Cilicia, of Syria, of Phoenicia.

      Caesarion was standing well in front,

      attired in rose-colored silk,

      on his chest a garland of hyacinths,

      his belt a double row of sapphires and amethysts,

      his shoes laced up with white

      ribbons embroidered with pink-skinned pearls.

      Him they declared greater than the boys:

      him they declared King of Kings.

      The Alexandrians were certainly aware

      that these were merely words, a bit of theatre.

      But the day was warm and poetic, the sky pale blue,

      the Alexandrian Gymnasium

      a triumphant artistic achievement,

      the courtiers’ elegance exceptional,

      Caesarion all grace and beauty

      (Cleopatra’s son, of Lagid blood):

      and the Alexandrians rushed to the festival,

      filled with excitement, and shouted acclaim

      in Greek, and in Egyptian, and some in Hebrew,

      enchanted by the lovely spectacle—

      though of course they knew what they were worth,

      what empty words these kingdoms were.

      [1912; 1912]

       Philhellene

      Take care the engraving’s artistically done.

      Expression grave and majestic.

      The diadem better rather narrow;

      I don’t care for those wide ones, the Parthian kind.

      The inscription, as usual, in Greek:

      nothing excessive, nothing grandiose—

      the proconsul mustn’t get the wrong idea,

      he sniffs out everything and reports it back to Rome—

      but of course it should still do me credit.

      Something really choice on the other side:

      some lovely discus-thrower

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