Demetrius

and at last some of the soldiers ventured to go to Demetrius, bidding him to go away and save himself; for the Macedonians, they said, were tired of waging war in support of his luxurious way of living. Demetrius thought this very moderate language compared with the harshness of the rest; so he went to his tent, and, as if he had been an actor and not a real king, put on a dark cloak in place of his stage-robes of royalty, and stole away unnoticed.

Most of the soldiers at once fell to pillaging and tearing down his tent, and fought with one another for the spoils; but Pyrrhus came up, mastered the camp without a blow, and took possession of it. And all Macedonia was divided between Pyrrhus and Lysimachus, after Demetrius had reigned over it securely for seven years.[*](From 394 to 287 B.C.)

When Demetrius thus lost his power and fled for refuge to Cassandreia, his wife Phila was full of grief and could not endure to see her husband, that most afflicted of kings, once more in private station and in exile; she gave up all hope, and in hatred of his fortune, which was more secure in adversity than in prosperity, she drank poison and died. But Demetrius, determined to cling still to what was left of his wrecked fortunes, went off to Greece, and tried to assemble his friends and generals who were there.

The Menelaüs of Sophocles[*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag.2 p. 315.) applies this simile to his own fortunes:—

1. But my fate on the swiftly turning wheel of God
2. Goes whirling round forever and ever changes shape,
3. Just as the moon’s appearance for two kindly nights
4. Could never be identical and show no change,
5. But out of darkness first she comes forth young and new,
6. With face that ever grows more beautiful and full,
7. And when she reaches largest and most generous phase,
8. Again she vanisheth away and comes to naught.

This simile might be better used of the fortunes of Demetrius, now waxing and now waning, now full-orbed and now diminished, since even at this time, when his power seemed to fail altogether and suffer extinction, it shot forth new rays of light, and sundry accessions of strength little by little filled out the measure of his hopes. At first he went about visiting the cities in the garb of a private man and without the insignia of a king, and one who saw him thus at Thebes applied to him, not inaptly, the verses of Euripides[*](Bacchae, 4 f., with adaptation from the first person.):—

1. Exchanging now the form of god for that of man,
2. He visits Dirce’s rivulets and Ismenus’ flood.