Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.2, 1865).djvu/170

162 and sea-coast ungarrisoned, and almost desolate, that they might seem inconsiderable; in the mean time, collecting large forces up the country, and furnishing his inland posts, strong holds, and towns, with arms, money, and men fit for service, he thus provided himself for war, and yet kept his preparations close. He had in his armory arms for thirty thousand men; in granaries in places of strength, eight millions of bushels of corn, and as much ready money as would defray the charge of maintaining ten thousand mercenary soldiers for ten years in defence of the country. But before he could put these things into motion, and carry his designs into effect, he died for grief and anguish of mind, being sensible he had put his innocent son Demetrius to death, upon the calumnies of one that was far more guilty. Perseus, his son that survived, inherited his hatred to the Romans as well as his kingdom, but was incompetent to carry out his designs, through want of courage, and the viciousness of a character in which, among ftiults and diseases of various sorts, covetousness bore the chief place. There is a statement also of his not beinw true born; that the wife of king Philip took him from his mother Gnathænion (a woman of Argos, that earned her living as a seamstress), as soon as he was bom, and passed him upon her husband as her own. And this might be the chief cause of his contriving the death of Demetrius; as he might well fear, that so long as there was a lawful successor in the family, there was no security that his spurious birth might not be revealed.

Notwithstanding all this, and though his spirit was so mean, and temper so sordid, yet, trusting to the strength of his resources, he engaged in a war with the Romans, and for a long time maintained it; repulsing and even vanquishing some generals of consular dignity, and some great armies ami fleets. He routed Publius Licinius, who was the first that invaded Macedonia, in a cavalry battle,