The Annotated Edition
Waiting for the Barbarians by C. P. Cavafy
Read aloud in ~1 min
A crowd of Roman officials and citizens has gathered, all dressed up and prepared to welcome barbarian invaders — but the barbarians never show up.
- Poet
- C. P. Cavafy
- Themes
- despair, fear, freedom
§01Quick summary
What this poem is about
A crowd of Roman officials and citizens has gathered, all dressed up and prepared to welcome barbarian invaders — but the barbarians never show up. When news arrives that there are no barbarians, confusion and disappointment wash over everyone, as it becomes clear that public life had revolved around the notion of an enemy that never appeared. The poem poses a haunting, profound question: what happens to people when the threat they based their identity on simply isn’t there?
§02Themes
Recurring themes
§03Tone & mood
How this poem feels
Dry, ironic, and eerily calm. Cavafy writes in a flat, almost bureaucratic tone that amplifies the absurdity — there's no outrage or alarm, just a series of patient questions and answers that gradually expose the emptiness of the entire civic performance. By the end, the tone shifts into something genuinely unsettling, evoking a sense of existential dread expressed in a monotone.
§04Symbols & metaphors
Symbols & metaphors
- The Barbarians
- The barbarians are never defined and never show up. They act as a blank canvas for everything a society needs to feel unified: an enemy, a mission, a justification for wielding power. Their absence reveals that the civilization's identity relies completely on having an 'other' to contrast itself with.
- The Ceremonial Robes and Gifts
- The elaborate costumes and prepared tributes indicate that the ruling class has already embraced their subordination even before a single barbarian arrives. This display of power has turned into a display of surrender — the symbols of authority are now being used to usher in their own replacement.
- The Forum / Public Space
- The Roman forum is the center of civic and democratic life. By filling it with people who are just *waiting* and doing nothing, Cavafy drains the space of its significance. Public life has turned into a theater without a script.
- The Orators' Silence
- The lawmakers' silence — since the barbarians won't listen anyway — shows a choice to abandon reason and persuasion. They give up on language, the tool of civilization, without even being asked to.
- Nightfall
- The poem concludes with the onset of night, yet the barbarians still have not shown up. This darkness isn't merely a physical absence of light; it symbolizes the failure of the day's intentions and, in turn, the unraveling of the society's guiding story.
§05Historical context
Historical context
C. P. Cavafy wrote this poem in 1898 and published it in 1904, during a time when European empires were nervously monitoring the limits of their power. Greece had just faced a humiliating defeat in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, and throughout Europe, the idea of "civilization versus barbarism" was often used to legitimize colonialism and military expansion. Cavafy, living in Alexandria as a Greek in a cosmopolitan but colonized city, had a keen outsider's perspective on how empires create and rely on their enemies. The poem invokes the imagery of late Roman decline—a recurring theme in Cavafy's work—but its true target is any political culture that bases its identity on the fear of external threats instead of on authentic values. It remains one of the most translated Greek poems of the twentieth century.
§06FAQ
Questions readers ask
The poem suggests that societies can become so reliant on the notion of an enemy that they struggle to operate without one. When the barbarians don't show up, the crowd doesn't feel relieved; instead, they feel disoriented. Cavafy implies that 'the barbarians' were never truly an external danger; they served as a psychological and political support.
They aren't identified, and that's intentional. They could represent any group that those in power label as 'other' or 'threatening.' Since they never show up, the poem implies they might mostly be a fiction—or at least a useful creation that helps maintain the power of the elite and keeps the public in check.
The setting features Roman imagery—emperors, consuls, praetors, the forum—but Cavafy isn’t crafting historical fiction. Instead, he employs Rome as a lens to discuss any civilization throughout history, including his own time. This Roman backdrop lends the poem a timeless, almost theatrical feel.
It's the poem's central irony presented directly. The speaker recognizes that the barbarians served as a *solution* — to boredom, to political stagnation, and to the question of what the state is truly meant to accomplish. Without them, there's no enemy to rally against, revealing the emptiness of civilization's true purpose.
It’s presented as a dialogue—a back-and-forth of questions and answers—which lends it a somewhat procedural, even bureaucratic feel. The translation doesn’t adhere to a strict rhyme scheme, and the lines flow like everyday conversation. This repetitive question-and-answer style reflects the mindless routine of a society simply going through the motions.
Absolutely. This piece critiques how those in power exploit the fear of outsiders to legitimize their authority and divert attention from their own shortcomings. Although it was written in 1898, it directly addresses the nationalism and imperial anxieties of Cavafy's era, yet its themes have resonated in nearly every period since — from the Cold War to post-9/11 politics.
That's one of Cavafy's keenest insights. The officials have arranged gifts and ceremonies of submission instead of weapons. This indicates that the civilization has already abandoned its own values and is just waiting to be supplanted — or that it never truly believed in those values to begin with.
Coetzee's 1980 novel takes its title and central concept directly from this theme: an empire fixated on a barbarian threat that might be mostly a figment of its imagination, and the moral decay that this fear generates. The novel elaborates on Cavafy's irony, weaving a complete story about complicity, torture, and the toll of sustaining an empire through created fear.
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