Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/139

 DEMETRIUS. 131 mouse fell from the ceiling ; and for this prize they leaped up and came to blows. In this famine, it is also related, the philosopher Epicurus saved his own life, and the lives of his scholars, by a small quantity of beans, which he distributed to them daily by number. In this condition was the city when Demetrius made his entrance and issued a proclamation that all the in- habitants should assemble in the theatre ; which being done, he drew up his soldiers at the back of the stage, occupied the stage itself with his guards, and, presently coming in himself by the actor's passages, when the peo- ple's consternation had risen to its height, with his first words he put an end to it. Without any harshness of tone or bitterness of words, he reprehended them in a gentle and friendly way, and declared himself reconciled, adiling a present of a hundred thousand bushels of wheat, and appointing as magistrates persons acceptable to the people. So Dromoclides the orator, seeing the people at a loss how to express their gratitude by any words or acclamations, and ready for any thing that would outdo the verbal encomiums of the public speakers, came for- ward, and moved a decree for delivering Pirceus and Munychia into the hands of king Demetrius. This was passed accordingly, and Demetrius, of his own motion, added a third garrison, which he placed in the Museum, as a precaution agauast any new restiveness on the part of the people, which might give hkn the trouble of quit- ting his other enterprises. He had not long been master of Athens before he had formed designs against LacedoBmon ; of which Archidamua, the king, being advertised, came out and met him, but he was overthrown in a battle near Mantinea ; after which Demetrius entered Laconia, and, in a second battle near Sparta itself, defeated him again with the loss of two hun- dred Lacedaemonians slain, and five hundred taken prison-