Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
a memorial at once of his power and of their own brave
resistance.
The quarrel between him and the Rhodians was on account of their
being allies to Ptolemy, and in the siege the greatest of all
the engines was planted against their walls. The base of it was
exactly square, each side containing twenty-four cubits; it rose
to a height of thirty-three cubits, growing narrower from the
base to the top. Within were several apartments or chambers,
which were to be filled with armed men, and in every story the
front towards the enemy had windows for discharging missiles of
all sorts, the whole being filled with soldiers for every
description of fighting. And what was most wonderful was that,
notwithstanding its size, when it was moved it never tottered or
inclined to one side, but went forward on its base in perfect
equilibrium, with a loud noise and great impetus, astounding the
minds, and yet at the same time charming the eyes of all the
beholders.
Whilst Demetrius was at this same siege, there were brought to
him two iron cuirasses from Cyprus, weighing each of them no
more than forty pounds, and Zoilus, who had forged them, to show
the excellence of their temper, desired that one of them might
be tried with a catapult missile, shot out of one of the engines
at no greater distance than six and twenty paces; and, upon the
experiment, it was found, that though the dart exactly hit the
cuirass, yet it made no greater impression than such a slight
scratch as might be made with the point of a style or graver.
Demetrius took this for his own wearing, and gave the other to
Alcimus the Epirot, the best soldier and strongest man of all
his captains, the only one who used to wear armor to the weight
of two talents, one talent being the weight which others thought
sufficient. He fell during this siege in a battle near the
theater.
The Rhodians made a brave defense, insomuch that Demetrius saw
he was making but little progress, and only persisted out of
obstinacy and passion; and the rather because the Rhodians,
having captured a ship in which some clothes and furniture, with
letters from herself; were coming to him from Phila his wife,
had sent on everything to Ptolemy, and had not copied the
honorable example of the Athenians, who, having surprised an
express sent from king Philip, their enemy, opened all the
letters he was charged with, excepting only those directed to
queen Olympias, which they returned with the seal unbroken.
Yet, although greatly provoked, Demetrius, into whose power it
shortly after came to repay the affront, would not suffer
himself to retaliate. Protogenes the Caunian had been making
them a painting of the story of Ialysus, which was all but
completed, when it was taken by Demetrius in one of the suburbs.
The Rhodians sent a herald begging him to be pleased to spare
the work and not let it be destroyed; Demetrius's answer to
which was that he would rather burn the pictures of his father
than a piece of art which had cost so much labor. It is said to
have taken Protogenes seven years to paint, and they tell us
that Apelles, when he first saw it, was struck dumb with wonder,
and called it, on recovering his speech, "a great labor and a
wonderful success," adding, however, that it had not the graces
which carried his own paintings as it were up to the heavens.
This picture, which came with the rest in the general mass to
Rome, there perished by fire.
While the Rhodians were thus defending their city to the
uttermost, Demetrius, who was not sorry for an excuse to retire,
found one in the arrival of ambassadors from Athens, by whose
mediation terms were made that the Rhodians should bind
themselves to aid Antigonus and Demetrius against all enemies,
Ptolemy excepted.
The Athenians entreated his help against Cassander, who was
besieging the city. So he went thither with a fleet of three
hundred and thirty ships, and many soldiers; and not only drove
Cassander out of Attica, but pursued him as far as Thermopylae,
routed him, and became master of Heraclea, which came over to
him voluntarily, and of a body of six thousand Macedonians,
which also joined him. Returning hence, he gave their liberty
to all the Greeks on this side Thermopylae, and made alliance
with the Boeotians, took Cenchreae, and reducing the fortresses
of Phyle and Panactum, in which were garrisons of Cassander,
restored them to the Athenians. They, in requital, though they
had before been so profuse in bestowing honors upon him, that
one would have thought they had exhausted all the capacities of
invention, showed they had still new refinements of adulation to
devise for him. They gave him, as his lodging, the back temple
in the Parthenon, and here he lived, under the immediate roof,
as they meant it to imply, of his hostess, Minerva; no reputable
or well-conducted guest to be quartered upon a maiden goddess.
When his brother Philip was once put into a house where three
young women were living, Antigonus saying nothing to him, sent
for his quartermaster, and told him, in the young man's
presence, to find some less crowded lodgings for him.
Demetrius, however, who should, to say the least, have paid the
goddess the respect due to an elder sister, for that was the
purport of the city's compliment, filled the temple with such
pollutions that the place seemed least profaned when his license
confined itself to common women like Chrysis, Lamia, Demo, and
Anticyra.
The fair name of the city forbids any further plain particulars;
let us only record the severe virtue of the young Damocles,
surnamed, and by that surname pointed out to Demetrius, the
beautiful; who, to escape importunities, avoided every place of
resort, and when at last followed into a private bathing room by
Demetrius, seeing none at hand to help or deliver, seized the
lid from the cauldron, and, plunging into the boiling water,
sought a death untimely and unmerited, but worthy of the country
and of the beauty that occasioned it. Not so Cleaenetus, the
son of Cleomedon, who, to obtain from Demetrius a letter of
intercession to the people in behalf of his father, lately
condemned in a fine of fifty talents, disgraced himself, and got
the city into trouble. In deference to the letter, they
remitted the fine, yet they made an edict prohibiting any
citizen for the future to bring letters from Demetrius. But
being informed that Demetrius resented this as a great
indignity, they not only rescinded in alarm the former order,
but put some of the proposers and advisers of it to death and
banished others, and furthermore enacted and decreed, that
whatsoever king Demetrius should in time to come ordain, should
be accounted right towards the gods and just towards men; and
when one of the better class of citizens said Stratocles must be
mad to use such words, Demochares of Leuconoe observed, he
would be a fool not to be mad. For Stratocles was well rewarded
for his flatteries; and the saying was remembered against
Demochares, who was soon after sent into banishment. So fared
the Athenians, after being relieved of the foreign garrison, and
recovering what was called their liberty.
After this Demetrius marched with his forces into Peloponnesus,
where he met with none to oppose him, his enemies flying before
him, and allowing the cities to join him. He received into
friendship all Acte, as it is called, and all Arcadia except
Mantinea. He bought the liberty of Argos, Corinth, and Sicyon,
by paying a hundred talents to their garrisons to evacuate them.
At Argos, during the feast of Juno, which happened at the time,
he presided at the games, and, joining in the festivities with
the multitude of the Greeks assembled there, he celebrated his
marriage with Deidamia, daughter of Aeacides, king of the
Molossians, and sister of Pyrrhus. At Sicyon he told the people
they had put the city just outside of the city, and, persuading
them to remove to where they now live, gave their town not only
a new site but a new name, Demetrias, after himself. A general
assembly met on the Isthmus, where he was proclaimed, by a great
concourse of people, the Commander of Greece, like Philip and
Alexander of old; whose superior he, in the present height of
his prosperity and power, was willing enough to consider
himself; and, certainly, in one respect he outdid Alexander, who
never refused their title to other kings, or took on himself the
style of king of kings, though many kings received both their
title and their authority as such from him; whereas Demetrius
used to ridicule those who gave the name of king to any except
himself and his father; and in his entertainments was well
pleased when his followers, after drinking to him and his father
as kings, went on to drink the health of Seleucus, with the
title of Master of the Elephants; of Ptolemy, by the name of
High Admiral; of Lysimachus, with the addition of Treasurer; and
of Agathocles, with the style of Governor of the Island of
Sicily. The other kings merely laughed when they were told of
this vanity; Lysimachus alone expressed some indignation at
being considered a eunuch; such being usually then selected for
the office of treasurer. And, in general, there was a more
bitter enmity between him and Lysimachus than with any of the
others. Once, as a scoff at his passion for Lamia, Lysimachus
said he had never before seen a courtesan act a queen's part; to
which Demetrius rejoined that his mistress was quite as honest
us Lysimachus's own Penelope.
But to proceed. Demetrius being about to return to Athens,
signified by letter to the city that he desired immediate
admission to the rites of initiation into the Mysteries, and
wished to go through all the stages of the
ceremony, from first to last, without delay. This was
absolutely contrary to the rules, and a thing which had never
been allowed before; for the lesser mysteries were celebrated in
the month of Anthesterion, and the great solemnity in
Boedromion, and none of the novices were finally admitted till
they had completed a year after this latter. Yet all this
notwithstanding, when in the public assembly these letters of
Demetrius were produced and read, there was not one single
person who had the courage to oppose them, except Pythodorus,
the torch-bearer. But it signified nothing, for Stratocles at
once proposed that the month of Munychion, then current, should
by edict be reputed to be the month of Anthesterion; which being
voted and done, and Demetrius thereby admitted to the lesser
ceremonies, by another vote they turned the same month of
Munychion into the other month of Boedromion; the celebration of
the greater mysteries ensued, and Demetrius was fully admitted.
These proceedings gave the comedian, Philippides, a new occasion
to exercise his wit upon Stratocles,
whose flattering fear
Into one month hath crowded all the year.
And on the vote that Demetrius should lodge in the Parthenon,
Who turns the temple to a common inn,
And makes the Virgin's house a house of sin.
Of all the disreputable and flagitious acts of which he was
guilty in this visit, one that particularly hurt the feelings of
the Athenians was that, having given comment that they should
forthwith raise for his service two hundred and fifty talents,
and they to comply with his demands being forced to levy it upon
the people with the utmost rigor and severity, when they
presented him with the money, which they had with such
difficulty raised, as if it were a trifling sum, he ordered it
to be given to Lamia and the rest of his women, to buy soap.
The loss, which was bad enough, was less galling than the shame,
and the words more intolerable than the act which they
accompanied. Though, indeed, the story is variously reported;