Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/394

 362 HISTORY OF GREECE. Athenian citizen, in whose hands the supreme government of the city should be vested. Kassander named Demetrius the Phalerean (i.e. an Athenian of the Deme Phalerum), one of the colleagues of Phokion ; who had gone into voluntary exile since the death of Antipater, but had recently returned.^ This convention restored substantially at Athens the Antipa- trian government ; yet without the severities which had marked its original establishment — and with some modifications in va- rious ways. It made Kassander virtually master of the city (as Antipater had been before him), by means of his governing nominee, upheld by the garrison, and by the fortification of Mu- nychia ; which had now been greatly enlarged and strength- ened,^ holding a practical command over Peiraeus, though that port was nominally relinquished to the Athenians. But there was no slavighter of orators, no expulsion of citizens : moreover, even the minimum of 1000 drachmae, fixed for the political fran- chise, though excluding the multitude, must have been felt as an improvement compared with the higher limit of 2000 drachmae prescribed by Antipater. Kassander was not, like his father, at the head of an overwhelming force, master of Greece. He had Polysperchon in the field against him with a rival army and an established ascendency in many of the Grecian cities ; it was therefore his interest to abstain from measures of obvious harsh- ness towards the Athenian people. Towards this end his choice of the Phalerean Demetrius appears to have been judicious. That citizen continued to ad- minister Athens, as satrap or despot under Kassander, for ten years. He was an accomplished literary man, friend both of the philosopher Theophrastus, who had succeeded to the school of Aristotle — and of the rhetor Deinarchus. He is described also as a person of expensive and luxurious habits ; towards which lie devoted the most of the Athenian public revenue, 1200 talents in amount, if Duris is to be believed. His administration is said to have been discreet and moderate. We know little of its details, but we are told that he made sumptuary laws, especially ' Diodor. xviii. 74. ' See the notice of Munychia, as it stood ten yeai-s afterwards (Diodor. X. 45).