If you are truly one of the select few, <br />watch how you acquire your power. <br />However much you are glorified, however much <br />the cities in Italy and in Thessaly <br />acclaim your achievements, <br />however many decrees in your honor <br />your admirers may have issued in Rome, <br />neither your joy nor your triumph will last, <br />nor will you feel like a superior -- what do you mean superior? -- man <br />when in Alexandria, Theodotus brings you, <br />upon a bloodstained tray, <br />the head of the wretched Pompey. <br /> <br />And do not rely on the fact that in your life, <br />circumscribed, regulated, and prosaic, <br />there are no such spectacular and terrifying things. <br />Perhaps at this very hour, Theodotus is entering <br />the well-appointed house of one of your neighbors -- <br />invisible, bodiless -- <br />carrying such a hideous head.<br /><br />Constantine P. Cavafy<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/theodotus/
