Comparison of Demetrius and Antony

Moreover, as regards the greatest and most brilliant of his achievements, namely, the war against Cassius and Brutus, it was to deprive his country and his fellow citizens of their liberty that the war was waged. But Demetrius, even before he felt the constraints of adversity, kept on liberating Greece and expelling their garrisons from her cities, unlike Antony, whose boast was that he had slain in Macedonia the men who had given liberty to Rome.

And besides, as regards their love of giving and the largeness of their gifts, one of the things for which Antony is lauded, Demetrius far surpassed in this, and bestowed more upon his enemies than Antony ever gave to his friends. It is true that for ordering the body of Brutus to be robed and buried Antony won a good name; but Demetrius gave obsequies to all his enemy’s dead, and sent his prisoners back to Ptolemy with money and gifts.[*](See the Demetrius, xvii. 1.)