Poseidonians by C.P. Cavafy

[We behave like] the Poseidonians in the Tyrrhenian Gulf, who although of Greek origin, became barbarized as Tyrrhenians or Romans and changed their speech and the customs of their ancestors.  But they observe one Greek festival even to this day; during this they gather together and call up from memory their ancient names and customs, and then, lamenting loudly to each other and weeping, they go away.  

Athenaios, Deipnosophistai, Book 14, 31A (632)

Poseidonians

by C.P. Cavafy

Translators Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

The Poseidonians forgot the Greek language

after so many centuries of mingling

with Tyrrhenians, Latins, and other foreigners.

The only thing surviving from their ancestors

was a Greek festival, with beautiful rites,

with lyres and flutes, contests and wreaths.

And it was their habit toward the festival's end

to tell each other about their ancient customs

and once again to speak Greek names

that only few of them still recognized.

And so their festival always had a melancholy ending

because they remembered that they too were Greeks,

they too once upon a time were citizens of Magna Graecia;

and how low they'd fallen now, what they'd become,

living and speaking like barbarians,

cut off so disastrously from the Greek way of life.