Demosthenes

And when Archias began to threaten him angrily, Now, said he, thou utterest the language of the Macedonian oracle;[*](i.e. thy real sentiments in obedience to Antipater.) but a moment ago thou were acting a part. Wait a little, then, that I may write a message to my family. With these words, he retired into the temple, and taking a scroll, as if about to write, he put his pen to his mouth and bit it, as he was wont to do when thinking what he should write, and kept it there some time, then covered and bent his head.

The spear-men, then, who stood at the door, laughed at him for playing the coward, and called him weak and unmanly, but Archias came up and urged him to rise, and reiterating the same speeches as before, promised him a reconciliation with Antipater. But Demosthenes, now conscious that the poison was affecting and overpowering him, uncovered his head; and fixing his eyes upon Archias,

Thou canst not be too soon now, said he, in playing the part of Creon in the tragedy and casting this body out without burial.[*](An allusion to the Creon in the Antigone of Sophocles, by whose edict the body of Polyneices was to be left unburied (vv. 26 ff. 191 ff.).) But I, O beloved Poseidon, will depart from thy sanctuary while I am still alive; whereas Antipater and the Macedonians would not have left even thy temple undefiled. So speaking, and bidding someone support him, since he was now trembling and tottering, he had no sooner gone forth and passed by the altar than he fell, and with a groan gave up the ghost.

As for the poison, Ariston says he took it from the pen, as I have said; but a certain Pappus, from whom Hermippus took his story, says that when he had fallen by the side of the altar, there was found written in the scroll the beginning of a letter, Demosthenes to Antipater, and nothing more;