Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/705

Rh  pattern for the pleasing correspondence of a virtuous friendship. They will sufficiently instruct us how an intercourse of writing, between two persons of different sexes, ought to be managed with delight and innocence.'

Her poems are more admired for propriety and beauty of thought, than harmony of versification.

a woman of fine sense and abilities, which enabled her to share in the affairs of government. She behaved with so much dexterity in managing the various tempers of those whom it was necessary to reduce, or keep to their allegiance, that she prevented an army composed entirely of factious and turbulent men, from making an insurrection. She married such maidens as were poor at her own expence; and opposed with so much vigour those that oppressed the innocent, that she entirely freed and succoured many persons who were in the way to be ruined by slanderers. Her abilities were not the effect of experience, for when but a young girl, Antipater, her father, one of the wisest politicians of his time, used to consult her on affairs of the highest importance: Phila's first husband was Craterus, who was better beloved by the Macedonians than any other of Alexander's captains. After his death she married Demetrius, who had several other wives, but Phila was the chief and had the greatest authority, though the difference of their ages prevented her from being able to secure his