This is why Dimitrios Selefkidis was displeased;
and right away he offered Ptolemy
purple robes, a magnificent diadem,
precious jewels, numerous servants and retainers,
his most expensive horses,
so that he might present himself at Rome as he should,
as an Alexandrian Greek monarch.
But Ptolemy, who'd come to beg,
knew his business and refused it all:
he didn't have the slightest need for these luxuries.
Shabbily dressed, humble, he entered Rome,
put himself up in the house of a minor artisan,
and then presented himself
as a poor, ill-fated creature to the Senate
in order to make his begging more effective.
Constantine P. Cavafy