“Caesarion” as Palimpsest

“Caesarion” (1918) has long been hailed as “virtually a key to our whole understanding of Cavafy’s work” (Robinson, 1988, p. 86). The poem’s title refers to Ptolemy XV Philopator Philometor, son of the seventh and most famous Cleopatra and allegedly Julius Caesar and nominally the last monarch of the Lagid dynasty in Egypt. He was born in 47 BCE and was put to death by Octavian seventeen years later, shortly after the suicides of Antony and his mother.