When the Athenians were defeated in the great sea-fight at Amorgos, he reached Athens before the news of the disaster, and drove though the Kerameikus with a garland on his head, telling all the people that a victory had been won. He decreed a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and had meat publicly distributed among the tribes for entertainments. Shortly afterwards the scattered ships began to arrive, coming home as well as they could after the defeat. When the people angrily turned upon him, resenting the trick which he had played them, he met their clamour with the utmost impudence, and said, "What harm have I done you, in giving you two days of happiness?" Such was the audacity of Stratokles. XII. There were, however, other marks of servility, "hotter than fire," as Aristophanes calls it. One Athenian surpassed Stratokles himself by passing a decree that Demetrius, whenever he visited Athens, should be received with the same divine honours which were paid to Demeter and Dionysius, and that money should be granted from the public treasury to the person who should celebrate the festival of the reception with the greatest magnificence, in order that with it he might erect some memorial of his success. At last the name of the month Munychion was changed to Demetrion, and the first day of it named Demetrias, while the name of the festival of the Dionysia was changed to Demetria. Most of these acts produced manifest signs of the displeasure of the gods. The peplus, upon which, according to the decree, the images of Zeus and Athena were woven together with those of Antigonus and Demetrius, was rent in two by a violent gust of wind as it was being conveyed in procession through the Kerameikus, while a great quantity of hemlock grew up round the altars which were erected in their honour, although it was not a common plant in the neighbourhood. On the day of the festival of Dionysius the procession was put a stop to by excessive cold, which came entirely out of season, and a severe frost not only destroyed all the fig-trees and vines, but even cut off a great part of the corn in the blade. In consequence of this, Philippides, who was an enemy of Stratokles, made the following allusion to him in one of his comedies: "Who was it caused the peplus to be rent? Who was it caused the frost to blight our vines? The wretch, who worships mortals like to gods, His crimes destroy us, not my harmless rhymes?"