Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/138

130 DEMETRIUS. finding himself unable to effect his design, he sent back orders for 'raising another fleet, and, with the troops which he had, marched into Peloponnesus, and laid siege to the city of Messena. In attacking which place, he was in danger of death; for a missile from an engine struck him in the face, and passed through the cheek into his mouth. He recovered, however, and, as soon as he was in a condition to take the field, won over divers cities which had revolted from him, and made an incursion into Attica, where he took Eleusis and Rhara- nus. and wasted the country thereabout. And that he might straighten the Athenians by cutting off all manner of provision, a vessel laden with com bound thither fall- ing into his hands, he ordered the master and the super- cargo to be immediately hanged, thereby to strike a terror into others, that so they might not venture to supply the city with provisions. By which means they were reduced to such extremities, that a bushel of salt sold for forty drachmas, and a peck of wheat for three hundred. Ptolemy had- sent to their relief a hundred and fifty galleys, which came so near as to be seen off yEgina ; but this brief hope was soon extinguished by the arrival of three hundred ships, which came to reinforce Demetrius from Cyprus, Peloponnesus, and other places ; upon which Ptolemy's fleet took to flight, and Lachares, the tyrant, ran away, leaving the city to its fate. And now the Athenians, who before had made it cap- ital for any person to propose a treaty or accommodation with Demetrius, immediately ojiened the nearest gates to send ambassadors to him, not so much out of hopes of obtaining any honorable conditions from his clemency as out of necessity, to avoid death by faimine. For among many frightful instances of the distress they were reduced to, it is said that a father and son were sitting in a room together, having abandoned every hope, when a dead