Trustees of Boston University

Young Men of Sidon (A.D. 400)Author(s): C. P. Cavafy and Peter GreenSource: Arion, Third Series, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring - Summer, 1998), p. 101Published by: Trustees of Boston UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20163710 .

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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 62.122.79.56 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 08:05:15 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions