Читать книгу The Complete Poems of C.P. Cavafy - Daniel Mendelsohn, Daniel Mendelsohn - Страница 107

After she returned from his funeral, greatly bereaved,

the sister of him who had temperately and sweetly lived—

the exceedingly scholarly Antiochus, king

of Commagene—she wanted an epitaph for him.

And the Ephesian sophist Callistratus—who sojourned

often in the principality of Commagene,

and who in the royal household had been

so pleasantly and frequently received—

wrote it, at the suggestion of Syrian courtiers,

and sent it to her aged ladyship.

“May the renown of Antiochus the benevolent king

be meetly extolled, O Commagenians.

He was the provident captain of the land.

The life he lived was just, and wise, and gallant.

The life he lived, still more, was that finest thing: Hellenic—

mankind holds no quality more precious:

among the gods alone does anything surpass it.”

[1923?; 1923]