Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/125

 DEMETRIUS. 117 tures of his father than a piece of art which had cost so much labor. It is said to have taken Protogenes seven years to paint, and they tell us that Apelles, when he first saw it, was struck dumb with wonder, and called it, on recovering his speech, "a great labor and a wonderful success," adding, however, that it had not the graces which carried his own paintings as it wei'e up to the lieavens."'' This picture, which came with the rest in the general mass to Eome, there perished by fire. While the Rhodians were thus defending their city to the uttermost, Demetrius, who was not sorry for an excuse to retire, found one in the arrival of ambassadors from Athens, by whose mediation terms were made that the Rhodians should bind themselves to aid Antigonus and Demetrius against all enemies, Ptolemy excepted. The Athenians entreated his help against Cassander, who was besieging the city. So he went thither with a fleet of three hundred and thirty ships, and many soldiers ; and not only drove Cassander out of Attica, but pursued him as far as Thermopylse, routed him, and became mas- ter of Heraclea, which came over to him voluntarily, and of a body of six thousand Macedonians, which also joined him. Returning hence, he gave their liberty to all the Greeks on this side Thermopylae, and made alliance with the Boeotians, took Cenchrece, and reducing the fortresses of Phyle and Panactum, in which were garrisons of Cassan- der, restored them to the Athenians. They, in requital, though they had before been so profuse in bestowing honors upon him, that one would have thought they had exhausted all the capacities of invention, showed they had still new refinements of adulation to devise for him. JElisLT), were " a great labor and a ens." Apelles was the senior and great artist. But there is more had been the early patron of Pro- execution than grace ; add but that, togenes.
 * The words, as reported by and the work would reach the heav-