Greece -- Biography -- Early works to 1800; Rome -- Biography -- Early works to 1800
X. Demetrius now returned to Munychia, encamped before it, dislodged the
garrison, and demolished the fort. And now at the invitation of the
Athenians he proceeded into the city, where he assembled the people and
re-established the ancient constitution. He also promised that his
father Antigonus would send them one hundred and fifty thousand bushels
of wheat and timber enough to build a fleet of one hundred ships of war.
Thus did the Athenians recover their democratic constitution fifteen
years after it had been dissolved; for during the period between the
Lamian war and the battle of Krannon their government had nominally been
an oligarchy, but practically had been a despotism, on account of the
great power of Demetrius of Phalerum.
The benefits which Demetrius conferred upon the Athenians rendered him
indeed great and glorious; but they rendered his fame invidious by the
extravagant honours which they conferred upon him. They were the first
of all men who bestowed upon Antigonus and Demetrius the title of Kings,
a name which they greatly disliked because of its association, and which
moreover belonged at that time in an especial manner to the descendants
of Philip and Alexander, being the only one of their ensigns of royalty
which had not been adopted by other princes. The Athenians too were the
only people who styled Antigonus and Demetrius their saviour gods, and
they even abolished the ancient office of the archon from whom the year
received its name, and elected in his place every year a priest to
minister at the altar of the saviour gods. They also decreed that their
images should be woven into the sacred peplus of Athena,[297] with those
of the gods. They consecrated the spot where Demetrius first set his
foot on the ground when he alighted from his chariot, and built an altar
upon it which was called the altar of "The Descending Demetrius." They
added two to the number of their tribes, and called them Demetrias and
Antigonis; and consequently they raised the number of the senators from
five to six hundred, because each tribe supplied it with fifty members.
XI. But the most outrageous of these devices of Stratokles, for it was
he who invented all these new extravagancies of adulation, was a decree
that ambassadors sent to Antigonus or to Demetrius should wear the same
holy title which had hitherto been given to the envoys who conducted the
public sacrifices to the great festivals at Olympia and at Delphi.
Indeed, in all other respects Stratokles was a man of shameless
effrontery and debauched life, who appeared to imitate the scurrility of
Kleon in ancient times by the reckless contempt with which he treated
the people. He publicly kept a courtesan named Phylakion; and one day
when she had bought some necks and brains in the market, he said to her,
"Why, you have bought us the same things for dinner which we politicians
play at ball with."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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