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Philip, at least. Tonight he’ll play at dice.
He has an urge to enjoy himself. Do place
lots of roses on the table. And what if
Antiochus at Magnesia came to grief?
They say his glorious army lies mostly ruined.
Perhaps they’ve overstated: it can’t all be true.
Let’s hope not. For though they were the enemy, they were kin to us.
Still, one “let’s hope not” is enough. Perhaps too much.
Philip, of course, won’t postpone the celebration.
However much his life has become one great exhaustion
a boon remains: he hasn’t lost a single memory.
He remembers how they mourned in Syria, the agony
they felt, when Macedonia their motherland was smashed to bits.—
Let the feast begin. Slaves: the music, the lights!
[1913; 1916]
The Seleucid’s Displeasure
The Seleucid Demetrius was displeased
to learn that a Ptolemy had arrived
in Italy in such a sorry state.
With only three or four slaves;
dressed like a pauper, and on foot. This is why
their name would soon be bandied as a joke,
an object of fun in Rome. That they have, at bottom,
become the servants of the Romans, in a way,
the Seleucid knows; and that those people give
and take away their thrones
arbitrarily, however they like, he knows.
But nonetheless at least in their appearance
they should maintain a certain magnificence;
shouldn’t forget that they are still kings,
that they are still (alas!) called kings.
This is why Demetrius the Seleucid was annoyed,
and straightaway he offered Ptolemy
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
