Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/161

DEMETRIUS. 153 eonesus, for want of exercise, and by indulging himself in eating and drinking, he fell into a disease, of which he died at the age of fifty-four. Seleucus Avas ill-spoken of, and was himself greatly grieved, that he had yielded so far to his suspicions, and had let himself be so much out- done by the barbarian Dromichoetes of Thrace, who had shown so much humanity and such a kingly temper in his treatment of his prisoner Lysimachus. There was something dramatic and theatrical in the very funeral ceremonies with which Demetrius was hon- ored. For his son Antigonus, understanding that his re- mains were coming over from Syria, went with all his fleet to the islands to meet them. They were there pre- sented to him in a golden urn, which he placed in his largest admiral galley. All the cities where they touched in their passage sent chaplets to adorn the urn, and de- puted certain of their citizens to follow in mourning, to assist at the funeral solemnity. When the fleet ap- proached the harbor of Corinth, the urn, covered with purple, and a royal diadem upon it, was visible upon the poop, and a troop of young men attended in arms to receive it at landing. Xenophantus, the most famous musician of the day, played on the flute his most solemn measure, to which the rowers, as the ship came in, made loud response, their oars, like the funeral beating of the breast, keeping time with the cadences of the music. But Antigonus, in tears and mourning attire, excited among the spectators gathered on the shore the' greatest sorrow and compassion. After crowns and other honors had been offered at Corinth, the remains were conveyed to Demetrias, a city to which Demetrius had given his name, peopled from the inhabitants of the small villages of lolcus. Demetrius left no other children by his wife Phila but Antigonus and Stratonice, but he had two other sons,