Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/126

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118 DEMETRIUS. They gave him, as his lodging, the back temi)le= in the Parthenon, and here he lived, under the immediate roof, as they meant it to imply, of his hostess, Minerva ; no reputa- ble or well-conducted guest to be quartered upon a maiden goddess. When his brother Philip was once put into a house where three young women were living, Antigonus, saying nothing to him, sent for his quartermaster, and told him, in the young man's presence, to find some less crowded lodgings for him. Demetrius, however, who should, to say the least, have paid the goddess the respect due to an elder sister, for that was the purport of the city's compliment, filled the temple with such pollutions that the place seemed least profaned when his license confined itself to common wo- men like Chrysis, Lamia, Demo, and Anticyra. The fair name of the city forbids any further plain par- ticulars ; let us only record the severe virtue of the 3'oung Damocles, surnamed, and by that surname pointed out to Demetrius, the beautiful ; who, to escape importunities, avoided every place of resort, and when at last followed into a private bathing room by Demetrius, seeing none at hand to help or deliver, seized the lid from the caul- dron, and, plunging into the boiling water, sought a death untimely and unmerited, but worthy of the country and of the beauty that occasioned it. Not so Clesenetus, the son of Cleomedon, who, to obtain from Demetrius a letter of intercession to the people in behalf of his father, lately

  • The back temple, or opisthodo- and this, it is supposed, was the

mos, was the portion entered from original maiden-chamber, or Par- the east end. There were here thenon, the goddess's private apart- two chambers, a sort of vestibule, the ment. When this name was ap- opisthodomos proper, and an inner plied to the whole temple, the term chamber immediately at the back opislhodomos would be extended to of the statue in tiie great western include the inner as well as the hall or hecatompedon. In this, outer chamber, probably, Demetrius was lodged ;