find in you the best of guides, that I might make
the face of the youth I loved as it really was.
This has proved to be very difficult since
some fifteen years have passed since the day on which
he fell, a soldier, in the defeat at Magnesia.
[1903; 1912; 1921]
Those Who Fought on Behalf of the Achaean League
You brave, who fought and fell in glory:
who had no fear of those who’d conquered everywhere.
You blameless, even if Diaeus and Critolaus blundered.
Whensoever the Greeks should want to boast,
“Such are the men our race produces,” is what they’ll say
about you. That’s how marvelous the praise for you will be.—
Written in Alexandria by an Achaean:
in the seventh year of Ptolemy, the “Chickpea.”
[1922; 1922]
For Antiochus Epiphanes
The young Antiochene said to the king,
“In my heart there beats a single precious hope:
the Macedonians again, Antiochus Epiphanes,
the Macedonians are back in the great fight again.
If only they would win— I’ll give to anyone who wants them
the horses and the lion, the Pan made out of coral,
and the elegant mansion, and the gardens in Tyre,
and everything else you’ve given me, Antiochus Epiphanes.”
Maybe he was moved a little bit, the king.
But he recalled at once his father and his brother,
and so made no response. Some eavesdropper might
go and repeat something.— Anyway, as expected,
at Pydna there swiftly came the horrible conclusion.
[1911?; 1922; 1922]
In an Old Book
In an old book—about a hundred years old—
I found, neglected among the leaves,
a watercolour with no signature.
It must have been the work of a very powerful artist.
It bore the title “Representation of Love.”
But “—of the love of extreme sensualists” would have been more fitting.
For it was clear as you looked at this work
(the artist’s idea was easily grasped)
that the youth in this portrait wasn’t meant
for those who love in a somewhat wholesome way,
within the limits of what is strictly permitted—
with his chestnut-brown, intensely colored eyes;
with the superior beauty of his face,
the beauty of unusual allures;
with those flawless lips of his that bring
pleasure to the body that it cherishes;
with those flawless limbs of his, made for beds
called shameless by the commonplace morality.
[1892?; 1922]
In Despair
He’s lost him utterly. And from now on he seeks
in the lips of every new lover that he takes
the lips of that one: his. Coupling with every new
lover that he takes he longs to be mistaken:
that it’s the same young man, that he’s giving himself to him.
He’s lost him utterly, as if he’d never been.
The other wished—he said— he wished to save himself
from that stigmatized pleasure, so unwholesome;
from that stigmatized pleasure, in its shame.
There was still time, he said— time to save himself.
He’s lost him utterly, as if he’d never been.
In his imagination, in his hallucinations
in the lips of other youths he seeks the lips of that one;
He wishes that he might feel his love again.
[1923; 1923]
Julian, Seeing Indifference
“Seeing, then, that there is great indifference
among us toward the gods”—he says with that solemn affect.
Indifference. But what then did he expect?
Let him organize religion as much as he pleased,
let him write the high priest of Galatia as much as he pleased,
or to others like him, exhorting, giving directions.
His friends weren’t Christians: that much is certain.
But even so they weren’t able to
play the way that he did (brought up as a Christian)
with the system of a new religion,
ridiculous in theory and in practice.
In the end they were Greeks. Nothing in excess, Augustus.
