Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/127

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DEMETllIUS. 119 condemned in a fine of fifty talents, disgraced liimself, and got the city into trouble. In deference to the letter, they remitted the fine, yet they made an edict prohibiting any citizen for the future to bring letters from Demetrius. But being informed that Demetrius resented this as a great in- dignity, they not only rescinded in alarm the former order, butput some of the proposers and advisers of it to death and banished others, and furthermore enacted and decreed, that whatsoever king Demetrius should in time to come ordain, should be accounted right towards the gods and just towards men ; and when one of the better class of citizens said Stratocles must be mad to use such words, Demochares* of Leuconoe observed, he would be a fool not to be mad. For Stratocles was well rewarded for his flatteries; and the saying was remembered against Demochares, who was soon after sent into banishment. So fared the Athe- nians, after being relieved of the foreign garrison, and recovering what was called their liberty. After this Demetrius marched with his forces into Pelo- ponnesus, where he met with none to oppose him, his enemies flying before him, and allowing the cities to join him. He received into friendship all Acte,-j- as it is called, and all Arcadia except Mantinea. He bought the liberty of Argos, Corinth, and Sicyon, by paying a hundred tal- ents to their garrisons to evacuate them. At Argos, during the feast of Juno, which happened at the time, he presided at the games, and, joining in the festivities with the multitude of the Greeks assembled there, he celebrated his marriage with Deidamia, daughter of -5i]acides, king of the

  • Demochares of Leuconop, a dif- account of him in his Lives of the

ferent man from Demochares of Ten Orators, and has preserved a Soli, mentioned a little further on, decree passed by the people to do is the sister's son of Demosthenes, hira honor. and was himself eminent as a public t The sea-coast of Argolis, oppo- epeaker and political leader in site JE^'ma, in which lay the towns Athens. Plutarch has given some of Epidaurus and Troezea.