Complete Poems (48 page)
Authors: C.P. Cavafy
A
LEXANDER
J
ANNAEUS
, a grandson of Simon Maccabee, acceded to the throne in 103 B.C. on the death of his elder brother, Aristobulus I, whose widow, A
LEXANDRA
-S
ALOME
, Alexander married soon after.
(This Alexandra was the grandmother of the Alexandra who, in “Aristobulus,” mourns the murder of her son.) It was Alexander Jannaeus’s elder brother who established the Hasmoneans as a secular dynasty, abandoning the title of High Priest for that of king, and Alexander himself added greatly to Judea’s territorial possessions. As Cavafy well knew, Alexander Jannaeus’s reign and its emphasis on aggressive military expansion saw the beginning of certain tensions—between the popular Pharisees and the aristocratic Sadducees, between political and military leaders—that would eventually lead to the downfall of the Hasmonean dynasty. These tensions were temporarily quieted under Alexandra, who became queen upon Alexander’s death in 76 B.C.—the only queen regnant in the history of Judea—and who ruled peacefully until her own death in 67. But they soon exploded once again when her two sons, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, fought for supremacy, bringing in various outside powers as allies; and it was only the intervention of the Romans—first Pompey, in 63 B.C., and then Marc Antony in the late 40s B.C.—that restored peace to Judea, which subsequently became a Roman administrative province.
Hence it seems right to take as ironic the speaker’s assertion that Alexander and Alexandra presided over the conclusion of the “great work” initiated under the Maccabees: for their reigns saw the unleashing of the forces that would bring Judean independence itself to an end.
Beautiful, White Flowers As They Went So Well
White flowers conventionally adorned the coffins of the young; Liddell, in his biography of Cavafy, records a remark made to him by a Greek undertaker that purple flowers would have been considered appropriate for an older person.
Come Now, King of the Lacedaemonians
For the particulars of the story of the Spartan king Cleomenes and his mother, and Cavafy’s adaptation of Plutarch’s account of this tale, see the note on “In Sparta,”
here
; the passage from which the title of the present poem is taken can be found
here
.
This remarkably terse and moving poem perhaps brings to mind an apothegm from the
Fusées
of Baudelaire (17), a poet of considerable importance to Cavafy: “In certain almost supernatural states of mind, life’s profoundness reveals itself completely in the spectacle, however ordinary it may be, that one has before one’s eyes. It becomes its Symbol.”
In a note dated June 29, 1906, Cavafy wrote about the particular aesthetic and erotic effect that working-class youths had on him:
I do like and I am moved by the beauty of the folk, of the poor youth. Servants, workers, petty commercial clerks, shop attendants. This is the recompense, one guesses, for their deprivations. All this physical work and exercise make their bodies beautiful and symmetrical. They are almost always lean. Their faces, either pale when their work is indoors, or sunburned when they are outdoors, have an attractive, poetic hue. They are a contrast to the affluent youth who are either sickly and physiologically dirty, or filled with fat and stains from too much food and drink, and [indulgence in too many] quilts; you think that in their bloated or dimpled faces you can discern the ugliness of the theft and robbery of their inheritance and its interest.
For more on this aspect of Cavafy’s poetry, see the note on the Unfinished Poem “The Photograph,”
here
.
The poem is set during the 120s B.C., when the Seleucid empire was tottering and subject to interference by venal foreign powers. “M
ALEFACTOR
” was the bitter nickname given by his people to Ptolemy VIII of
Egypt (170–116 B.C.), whose official epithet was
Euergetes,
“Benefactor” (see “Envoys from Alexandria,” and also the Unfinished Poem “Ptolemy the Benefactor [or Malefactor]”). Z
ABINAS
(“Slave”) was the nickname of Alexander, the son of the usurper of the Seleucid throne, Alexander Balas (see “Of Demetrius Soter” and “The Favour of Alexander Balas”); between 128 and 123 B.C., Zabinas himself usurped the Syrian throne. He reigned until he was deposed and killed by Antiochus VIII (whose nickname, G
RYPUS
, means “Hook-nosed”). J
OHN
H
YRCANUS
was a son of the High Priest and freedom fighter Simon Maccabee (brother of Judah), and the father of Alexander Jannaeus (see “Alexander Jannaeus”). John’s interests were naturally served by the chaos in Syria, to which Judea had belonged before it gained independence in 142.
According to the Formulas of Ancient Greco-Syrian Magicians
For the aura of occultism in this poem, which makes itself felt so often in the poet’s work, see the note on “That They Come—,”
here
. In connection with this stark yet delicate poem, it’s worth recalling a deeply poignant episode from Cavafy’s final illness that was recorded by Rika Sengopoulos:
Once in all his dreadful illness Cavafy wept. It was the day on which he was to go into hospital. We brought a little suitcase to take some papers with him and a few bits of clothing he wanted. When he saw the suitcase he was overcome by tears. We tried to calm him in this heart-rending moment when he was leaving his house for ever. He took the block [on which the poet, after his tracheotomy, wrote in order to communicate with those around him] and wrote: “I bought this suitcase 30 years ago, in a hurry one evening, to go to Cairo for pleasure. Then I was young and strong, and not ugly.”
An early version of this poem, entitled “Except the Lacedaemonians,” was probably written in June 1916.
The opening line is a quotation from the message from Alexander the Great to the Athenians accompanying the three hundred Persian panoplies that he sent to Athens to commemorate his victory over the forces of Darius III, the king of Persia, at G
RANICUS
—one of the three battles that marked his conquest of the Persian empire (the others being I
SSUS
and A
RBELA
). Of the Greek states, only Sparta refused to join in Alexander’s panhellenic campaign against Persia, proudly unwilling, as the Spartans were, to serve under a non-Spartan general. And yet this ostensibly high-minded and nationalistic pride cost them dearly, since in refusing to join the Macedonian’s expedition into Asia, the Spartans missed out on the greatest military conquests the world had ever seen: conquests that took Alexander and his armies as far east as B
ACTRIA
, a province located in the north of the present-day Afghanistan, and India. The C
OMMON
G
REEK
L
ANGUAGE
refers to what scholars call Koinê (“Common”), the Greek language that became the lingua franca of the Hellenistic world after Alexander’s conquest.
For the significance of the year 200 B.C.—a moment immediately preceding the culminating Roman defeats of Hellenistic Greek monarchs, and therefore a date that marks the imminent absorption of the Greek world by Rome—see the note on “In a Large Greek Colony, 200 B.C.,”
here
. The significance of this date thus undercuts the swagger of the poem’s narrator, with his supreme confidence in the greatness of the Greek civilization of the Hellenistic world: everything of which he boasts will soon be the property of Rome. That Cavafy was preoccupied with issues of Hellenic cultural and political unity in the years following the disastrous conclusion of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–22 is demonstrated by the recurrence of allusions to this crucial date of 200 B.C. in a number of poems he was working and reworking at the beginning of the 1930s: the present poem, “In a Large Greek Colony, 200 B.C.” (1928), and the two Unfinished Poems “Nothing About the Spartans” (1930) and “Agelaus” (1932).
A prior version, entitled “The Summer of 1895,” was probably written in July 1921.
The poem alludes to a famous incident from the last year of Julian the Apostate’s life, described at length by Gibbon. In July 362 Julian had set forth from the capital at Constantinople to A
NTIOCH
, which was to serve as the base for his Persian campaign (see “Julian and the Antiochenes,” and the note
here
). While there, he ordered the sanctuary of the god Apollo at D
APHNE
, near Antioch, to be cleared of the Christian tombs that had been built there over the years. One of these tombs, to which a church had been attached, was that of B
ABYLAS
, bishop of Antioch from 237 to 250 and a martyr of the church. (Ironically, his remains had been transferred to the vicinity of Apollo’s temple in the first place by Julian’s brother, Gallus, a fervent Christian, when the latter was serving as
caesar
in the East.) Heeding the complaints of Apollo’s priests, Julian ordered the church demolished and the saint’s relic moved elsewhere. Soon afterward, in October 362, Apollo’s temple and the cult statue of the god were destroyed by a fire that, Julian alleged, the Christians had started. The incident proved the nadir of Julian’s abysmal relationship with Antioch’s Christian community: the emperor had already been insulted by the Christian populace, and the hostile town council had blocked relief efforts he organized during a famine that occurred there, in order to blacken his reputation. It was in response to this hostility from his Christian subjects in and around Antioch that Julian wrote the
Misopogon,
which is cited in the epigraph to “Julian and the Antiochenes.”
Gibbon describes the incident as follows:
When Julian, on the day of the annual festival, hastened to adore the Apollo of Daphne, his devotion was raised to the highest pitch of eagerness and impatience. His lively imagination anticipated the grateful pomp of victims, of libations and of incense; a long procession of youths and virgins, clothed in white robes, the symbol of their innocence; and the tumultuous concourse of an innumerable people. But the zeal of Antioch was diverted, since the reign of Christianity, into a different channel. Instead of hecatombs of fat
oxen sacrificed by the tribes of a wealthy city to their tutelar deity the emperor complains that he found only a single goose, provided at the expense of a priest, the pale and solitary inhabitant of this decayed temple. The altar was deserted, the oracle had been reduced to silence, and the holy ground was profaned by the introduction of Christian and funereal rites. After Babylas (a bishop of Antioch, who died in prison in the persecution of Decius) had rested near a century in his grave, his body, by the order of Cæsar Gallus, was transported into the midst of the grove of Daphne. A magnificent church was erected over his remains; a portion of the sacred lands was usurped for the maintenance of the clergy, and for the burial of the Christians at Antioch, who were ambitious of lying at the feet of their bishop; and the priests of Apollo retired, with their affrighted and indignant votaries. As soon as another revolution seemed to restore the fortune of Paganism, the church of St. Babylas was demolished, and new buildings were added to the mouldering edifice which had been raised by the piety of Syrian kings. But the first and most serious care of Julian was to deliver his oppressed deity from the odious presence of the dead and living Christians, who had so effectually suppressed the voice of fraud or enthusiasm. The scene of infection was purified, according to the forms of ancient rituals; the bodies were decently removed; and the ministers of the church were permitted to convey the remains of St. Babylas to their former habitation within the walls of Antioch. The modest behavior which might have assuaged the jealousy of a hostile government was neglected, on this occasion, by the zeal of the Christians. The lofty car, that transported the relics of Babylas, was followed, and accompanied, and received, by an innumerable multitude; who chanted, with thundering acclamations, the Psalms of David [that were] the most expressive of their contempt for idols and idolaters. The return of the saint was a triumph; and the triumph was an insult on the religion of the emperor, who exerted his pride
to dissemble his resentment. During the night which terminated this indiscreet procession, the temple of Daphne was in flames; the statue of Apollo was consumed; and the walls of the edifice were left a naked and awful monument of ruin. The Christians of Antioch asserted, with religious confidence, that the powerful intercession of St. Babylas had pointed the lightnings of heaven against the devoted roof: but as Julian was reduced to the alternative of believing either a crime or a miracle, he chose, without hesitation, without evidence, but with some color of probability, to impute the fire of Daphne to the revenge of the Galilæans. Their offence, had it been sufficiently proved, might have justified the retaliation, which was immediately executed by the order of Julian, of shutting the doors, and confiscating the wealth, of the cathedral of Antioch. To discover the criminals who were guilty of the tumult, of the fire, or of secreting the riches of the church, several of the ecclesiastics were tortured; and a Presbyter, of the name of Theodoret, was beheaded by the sentence of the Count of the East. But this hasty act was blamed by the emperor; who lamented, with real or affected concern, that the imprudent zeal of his ministers would tarnish his reign with the disgrace of persecution.
Cavafy had finished correcting the proofs of this poem, but had not yet returned them to the printer, when he died on April 29, 1933, his seventieth birthday.
The first version of this poem was written in July 1894 and published in December of that year as “Sweet Voices” (now one of the Repudiated Poems); a subsequent revision was done in December 1903 and published in this form in August 1904.