54. This year died Philip, king of the Macedonians, being worn out with old age, and grief occasioned by his son’s death. He spent the winter at Demetrias, in great anguish of mind, occasioned both by regret for his son and contrition for his own cruelty. His other son also disquieted his mind, who, both in his own opinion and that of others, was undoubtedly king. The eyes of all were turned to him, and his own old age was desolate. Some only waiting for his death, while others did not even wait for that event. By which circumstance he was still more distressed, and with him Antigonus, son of Echecrates, named after his uncle Antigonus, who had been guardian to Philip, a man of royal dignity, and famed also for a remarkable battle which he fought against Cleomenes the Lacedæmonian. The Greeks called him the Guardian, to distinguish him from the other princes of that surname.[66] His nephew Antigonus, of all the friends whom Philip had honoured with his favours, alone remained uncorrupted; and this faithful attachment to him had made Perseus, who had been in no wise his friend, become now his most inveterate enemy. He, foreseeing in his mind with what danger to himself the inheritance of the kingdom would fall to Demetrius, as soon as he perceived the king’s mind to waver, and that he sometimes sighed with regret for the loss of his son; at one time by listening, and at another by making mention of the deed, as being rashly done, he himself was at hand, adding his complaint to the frequent lamentations of the king;—and, as the truth usually affords many traces of itself, he assisted with the most zealous diligence, in order that the whole might be brought to light as speedily as possible. Of the agents employed in that business, those who were most generally supposed guilty, were Apelles and Philocles, who had gone ambassadors to Rome, and had brought the letter under the name of Flamininus, which had proved so ruinous to Demetrius. They generally murmured in the palace, that it was a forgery, falsified by the secretary, and that the seal was counterfeited.