The young Antiochian said to the king:
“My heart pulses with a precious hope.
The Macedonians, Antiochos Epiphanis,
the Macedonians are back in the great fight.
Let them only win, and I will give anyone who wants them
the lion and the horses, the coral Pan,
the elegant palace, the gardens of Tyre,
and everything else you’ve given me, Antiochos Epiphanis.”
The king may have been moved a little,
but then he remembered his father, his brother,
and said nothing: an eavesdropper
might repeat something they had said. In any case, as expected,
the terrible catastrophe came swiftly, at Pydna.
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