Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/114

 106 DEMETRIUS. five liundred persons, fifty being chosen out of every tribe, they added one hundred more to represent these new tribes. But the wildest proposal was one made by Stratocles, the great inventor of all these ingenious and exquisite compliments, enacting that the members of any deputation that the city should send to Demetrius or Antigonus should have the same title as those sent to Delphi or Olympia for the performance of the national sacrifices in behalf of the state, at the great Greek festi- vals.* This Stratocles was, in all respects, an audacious and abandoned character, and seemed to have made it his ob- ject to cojDy, by his buffoonery and impertinence, Cleon's old familiarity with the people. His mistress, Phylacibn, one day bringing him a dish of brains and neckbones for his dinner, " Oh," said he, " I am to dine upon the things which we statesmen play at ball with." At another time, when the Athenians received their naval defeat near Amorgos, he hastened home before the news could reach the city, and, having a chaplct on his head, came riding through the Ceramicus, announcing that they had won a victory, and moved a vote for thanksgivings to the gods, and a distribution of meat among the people in their tribes. Presently after came those who lirought home the wrecks from the battle ; and when the people ex- claimed at what he had done, he came boldly to face the outcry, and asked what harm there had been in giving them two days' jileasure. Such was Stratocles. And, " adding flame to fire," as Aristophanes says, there was one who, to outdo Stratocles, proposed, that it should be decreed, that whensoever De- metrius should honor their city with his presence, they presbeutai, deputies, envoys, or era- ligious ceremonial, sent to appear, bassadors, but theoroi, religious del- not before men, but before a god. egates, a name given only to the
 * They should be called not representatives of a State at a re-