Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/117

DEMETRIUS. 109 and honor among all being retained bj' Phila, who was AntijDater's daughter, and had been the wife of Craterus, the one of all the successors of Alexander who left be- hind him the strongest feelings of attachment among the Macedonians. And for these reasons Antigonus had obliged him to marry her, notwithstanding the disparity of their years, Demetrius being quite a youth, and she much older ; and when upon that account he made some difficulty in complying, Antigonus whispered in his ear the maxim from Euripides, broadly substituting a new word for the original, serve, — Natural or not, A man must toed where profit will be got. Any respect, however, which he showed either to Phila or to his other wives did not go so far as to prevent him from consorting with any number of mistresses, and bearing, in this respect, the worst character of all the princes of his time. A summons now arrived from his fiither, ordering him to go and fight with Ptolemy in Cyprus, which he was obliged to obey, sorry as he was to abandon Greece. And in quitting this nobler and more glo- rious enterprise, he sent to Cleonides, Ptolemj-'s gen- eral, who was holding garrisons in Sicyon and Corinth, offering him money to let the cities be independent. But on his refusal, he set sail hastily, taking additional forces with him, and made for Cyprus ; where, immedi- ately upon his arrival, he fell upon Menelaus, the brother of Ptolemy, and gave him a defeat. But when Ptolemy himself came in person, with large forces both on land and sea, for some little time nothing took place be^'ond an interchange of menaces and lofty talk. Ptolemy bade Demetrius sail oflf before* the whole armament came up, if he did not wish to be trampled xmder foot ; and De-