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 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.