Making History Personal: Constantine Cavafy and the Rise of Rome
Frier, “Making History Personal,” page 1 Making History Personal: Constantine Cavafy and the Rise of Rome by Bruce W. Frier1 Toward the end of his life, Constantine Cavafy observed: “I have two capacities: to write Poetry or to write History. I haven’t written History, and it’s too late now. Now, you’ll say, how do I know that I could write History? I feel it.”2 How should one understand this remark? Did Cavafy ever actually regret a path not taken? Such a thought is, quite frankly, hard to credit. Still, a very large proportion of Cavafy’s surviving poems are set against an historical backdrop, above all the history of the ancient Greek diaspora: the numerous historic city-states of Greece, Magna Graecia, Asia Minor; the sophisti- cated metropoleis of Alexandria and Antioch, and the Levant; and the Hellenized kingdoms and provinces of a later age. Almost a sixth of his poems center on one particular epoch of their his- tory: the confrontation between the independent Hellenistic kingdoms and the rising might of the Roman Republic, a confrontation that began in earnest in 200 BCE with the outbreak of the Second Macedonian War and ended in 30 BCE with the annexation of Ptolemaic Egypt.3 The 45 or so poems in question were written across the entire span of Cavafy’s adulthood, from 1893 to 1932. This is a subject to which he often returned, one he constantly reworked and re-imagined, exploring diverse angles and unexpected points of approach. Substantial reading was involved: chiefly Polybius, Plutarch, and Cassius Dio among ancient authors, but also works of secondary 1 I am happy to acknowledge my deep obligation to many of my colleagues, first and foremost to the faculty of the Michigan Modern Greek program Vassilios Lambropoulos (who originally suggested this project) and Artemis Leontis; then also to my colleagues Traianos Gagos, Elaine Gazda, David Potter, and Ruth Scodel, and to Beau Case, our departmental Field Librarian, for his help in tracking down books.
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