Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata

Plutarch

Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. III. Babbitt, Frank Cole, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1931 (printing).

When he sent Demetrius his son, with many

ships and forces, to make the Greeks a free people, he said that his repute, kindled in Greece as on a lofty height, would spread like beacon-fires through out the inhabited world. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Demetrius, chap. viii. (892 B), where the phraseology is slightly different.)

While Antagoras the poet was cooking a congereel, and was shaking the skillet with his own hand, Antigonus stepped up behind him and said, Antagoras, do you imagine that Homer cooked a conger while he was writing of the exploits of Agamemnon ? To which Antagoras retorted. And do you, Your Majesty, believe that Agamemnon, while he was performing those exploits, was overmuch concerned if anybody in the army cooked a conger ? [*](Cf. Moralia, 668 C, and Athenaeus, 240 F, who quotes as his authority Hegesander.)

In a dream he saw Mithradates reaping a golden harvest, and thereupon planned to kill him. He told Demetrius his son, and bound him by an oath to silence. But Demetrius took Mithridates to walk with him beside the sea, and with the butt of his spear wrote in the sand, Flee, Mithridates. And Mithridates, understanding the purport, fled to Pontus and reigned there until his end. [*](Plutarch tells the story at length in his Life of Demetrius, chap. iv. (890 C); cf. also Appian, Roman History, Mithridatic Wars, 9. Mithridates became the founder of the line of Pontic kings, which lasted until 63 B.C. when Mithridates VI. was conquered by Pompey.)

When Demetrius was besieging the Rhodians [*](In 305-304 B.C.) he seized in one of the suburbs a painting of the

artist Protogenes in which he portrayed Ialysus. The Rhodians sent a herald to him and besought him to spare the painting. He replied that he would sooner destroy the statues and portraits of his father than that painting. [*](The painting was seen by Cicero (Orator, 2 (5)) at Rhodes; later it was carried to Rome and placed in the temple of Peace (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxv. 36 (102)).) And coming to terms with the Rhodians, he left his great siege-engine, the Citytaker, [*](This engine is described by Diodorus, xx. 48, and Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, chap. xxi. (898 B).) with them to serve as a token of his prowess and of their courage. [*](The story is told by Plutarch in his Life of Demetrius, chap. xxii. (898 E); Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxv. 36 (105); and Aulus Gellius, xv. 31.)

The Athenians revolted, and when he had taken their city, which was already in serious straits from lack of food, an assembly of the people was immediof grain. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Demetrius, chap. xxxiv. (905 B).)In speaking about this before them he lapsed into a barbarism. One of those sitting there repeated the phrase as it should have been spoken, and he said, For this correction, then, I give you eight thousand bushels more.