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the Classics

Young Men of Sidon (A.D. 400)

Author(s): C. P. Cavafy and Peter Green
Source: Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, Third Series, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring
- Summer, 1998), p. 101
Published by: Trustees of Boston University; Trustees of Boston University through its
publication Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20163710
Accessed: 05-09-2022 20:24 UTC

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Young Men of Sidon (A.D. 400)
C. P. CAVAFY

The actor whom they'd brought in for their entertainment

also declaimed a few outstanding epigrams.

The salon opened out onto the garden,

and a light pleasant odour of flowers
blended with the perfume
of the five scented Sidonian youths.

Meleager was read from, and Krinagoras, and Rhianos.

But when the actor declaimed
"This is the grave of Aeschylus, the Athenian, Euphorion's son?"
(perhaps with more than due emphasis
on "his renowned bravery", on "the grove of Marathon"),
at once there sprang up a most intense young man,
a fanatic for literature, and exclaimed:

"Oh, I really dislike that quatrain!

Expressions of that sort strike me, somehow, as spiritless.
What I say is, your work demands your entire strength,
Your entire concern?you must still remember your work
In times of trial, or when your prime is past.
This I expect, this I demand of you,
and not that you completely thrust out of your mind
the dazzling utterance of your tragedies,
your Agamemnon, your marvellous Prometheus,
your characterizations of Orestes and Cassandra,
your Seven Against Thebes?to set down for posterity
only that as a common soldier, in the ranks, you too
fought with the crowd against Datis and Artaphernes."

translated by Peter Green

This content downloaded from 134.220.1.139 on Mon, 05 Sep 2022 20:24:20 UTC
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