ARISTOVOULOS
The palace mourns, the king mourns
King Herod, inconsolable, laments,
the entire city grieves for Aristovoulos
who was drowned so unjustly, by accident,
while playing in the water with his friends.
And when they learn of it in other places,
when the news spreads as far as Syria,
many among the Greeks will be saddened;
many poets and sculptors will mourn,
for Aristovoulos was known to them,
and no vision of an ephebe in all our history
could compare to the beauty of this youth;
what statue of a God has Antioch ever deserved
as great as this young lad of Israel?
The First Princess weeps and wails,
his mother, the most eminent Jewish lady.
Alexandra weeps and laments for the calamity.
But when she finds herself alone her sorrow changes.
She groans; she rails; she curses; she reviles.
How they duped her! How they deceived her!
How their purpose was finally achieved!
They devastated the house of the Asamoneans.
How did that criminal king achieve his goal;
the deceitful, the corrupt, the dishonest.
How did he do it. With what infernal plot
so devious even Miriam didn’t suspect a thing.
If Miriam had sensed it, if she suspected it,
she would have found a way to save her brother;
she is a queen after all, she could have done something.
How they will celebrate now and secretly gloat,
those wicked sluts, Kypros and Salome;
those vulgar women Kypros and Salome.—
And she is powerless,
has to pretend that she believes their lies;
unable to go before the people
to go out and shout to the Hebrews,
to tell, to tell how the murder took place.
Manolis Aligizakis 