Making History Personal: Constantine Cavafy and the Rise of Rome

Frier, “Making History Personal,” page 10
account Cavafy may have known only through Bevan), Ptolemy, accompanied by a eunuch and
three slaves, obtained lodging in a shabby garret. The Seleucid prince Demetrius, long held as a
hostage in Rome and by consequence deeply cynical about Roman actions, 31 nonetheless pressed
Ptolemy to accept clothing and a crown befitting his station; but the Egyptian pretender declined.
Cavafy preserves the broad outlines of the story, but supplies from Bevan what Diodorus omits:
Ptolemy’s reason for refusing Demetrius’ generosity is tactical, in that he prefers to appear be-
fore “the Senate / as an ill-fortuned and impoverished man, / that with greater success he might
beg.” 32
Silver tetradrachm of Demetrius I Soter
(http://fontes.lstc.edu/~rklein/Documents/seleucids.htm)
Demetrius, in turn, is the protagonist in
“Of Demetrius Soter (162-150 B.C.)” (1915), one
of the deepest and most sharply drawn of Cavafy’s poems on this period. 33
As in the elegies dis-
cussed above, this lengthy poem has a “before and after” design, but one that is structured quite
differently. Following a one-line introduction undercutting any possible suspense (“His every
expectation turned out wrong!”), Cavafy portrays Demetrius in his long years as a hostage at
Rome, yearning to return to a Syria that he only vaguely remembers; he hopes to “end the shame
that since the time of the Battle / of Magnesia had ground his homeland down.” But after he
successfully escapes from Rome in 162 and claims his throne, the reality turns out otherwise.
31
E.g., “That they [the Hellenistic monarchs] 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.” Cavafy’s direct inspiration for these lines may be Polybius 31.2.7 and 10.7.
32
Diodorus, 31.18.1-2; Bevan, Seleucus II (1902) 189, who states that Demetrius was not allowed to “spoil a
calculated stage effect”; see Green, Alexander to Actium (1990) 442: “ostentatious poverty.” Valerius Maximus,
Memorabilia 5.1.1, observes that the Senate eventually provided Ptolemy with suitable accommodations; Bevan,
although citing the passage, omits this report, as does Cavafy. Polybius, 31.10, recounts a separate visit to Rome by
Ptolemy VIII in 163.
33
Liddell, Cavafy 175: “Demetrius is the one heroic figure in an unheroic world, and he has an understanding
that goes beyond his own personal problems to comprehend the collapse of his world.” Sometime before his death
in 175, Seleucus IV, Demetrius’ father, had sent Demetrius as a hostage to Rome; Demetrius was then about 10 or
12 years old. On Demetrius’ reign, see Habicht, “Seleucids” 356-362; Ehling, Untersuchungen (2008) 130-153.
While a hostage at Rome, Demetrius was only a prince and an heir apparent. On the poem, see Pinchin, Alexandria
Still (1977) 48-49, observing how “Cavafy compresses the time dimension.”