Zeus mourns deeply: Patroklos has killed Sarpedon. Now Patroklos and the Achaians rush forward to snatch up the body, to dishonor it. But Zeus does not tolerate that at all. Though he let his favorite child be killed— this the Law required— he will at least honor him after death. So he now sends Apollo down to the plain with instructions about how the body should be tended. Apollo reverently raises the hero’s body and carries it in sorrow to the river. He washes the dust and blood away, heals its terrible wounds so no trace is left, pours perfume of ambrosia over it, and dresses it in radiant Olympian robes. He bleaches the skin, and with a pearl comb combs out the jet black hair. He spreads and arranges the beautiful limbs. Now he looks like a young king, a royal charioteer— twenty-five or twenty-six years old— resting himself after winning the prize in a famous race, his chariot all gold and his horses the fastest. Having finished his task this way, Apollo calls for the two brothers, Sleep and Death, and orders them to take the body to Lykia, the rich country. So the two brothers, Sleep and Death, set off on foot toward the rich country, Lykia; and when they reached the door of the king’s palace, they handed over the honored body and then returned to their other labors and concerns. And once the body was received in the palace the sad burial began, with processions and honors and dirges, with many libations from sacred vessels, with all pomp and circumstance. Then skilled workers from the city and celebrated craftsmen in stone came to make the tombstone and the tomb.
Reprinted from C.P. CAVAFY: Collected Poems Revised Edition, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, edited by George Savidis. Translation copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Princeton University Press. For reuse of these translations, please contact Princeton University Press.
The Canon