Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/148

 140 DEMETRIUS. dems, his gold-edged purple and his hats with double streamers, his very shoes being of the richest purple felt, embroidered over in gold. One robe in particular, a most superb piece of work, was long in the loom in preparation for him, in which was to be wrought the representation of the universe and the celestial bodies. This, left unfinished when his reverses overtook him, not any one of the kings of Macedon, his successors, though divers of them haughty enough, ever presumed to use. But it was not this theatric pomp alone which dis- gusted the Macedonians, but his profuse and luxurious way of living; and, above all, the difficulty of speaking with him or of obtaining access to his presence. For either he would not be seen at all, or, if he did give audi- ence, he was violent and overbearing. Thus he made the envoys of the Athenians, to whom yet he was more ■attentive than to all the other Grecians, wait two whole years before they could obtain a hearing. And when the Lacedremonians sent a single person on an embassy to him, he held himself insulted, and asked angrily whether it was the fact that the Lacedaemonians had sent but one ambassador. "Yes," was the happy reply he received, " one ambassador to one king." Once when in some apparent fit of a more popular and acceptable temper he was riding abroad, a number of people came up and presented their written petitions. He courteously received all these, and put them up in the skirt of his cloak, while the poor people were over- joyed, and followed him close. But when he came upon the bridge of the river Axius, shaking out his cloak, he threw all into the river. This excited very bitter resentment among the Macedonians, who felt them- selves to be not governed, but insulted. They called to mind what some of them had seen, and others had heard related of King Philip's unambitious and