Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/152

 144 DEMETRIUS. be gone, for that the Macedonians were resolved no longer to hazard their Uves for the satisfliction of liis lux- ury and pleasure. And this was thought fair and moder- ate language, compared with the fierceness of the rest. So, withdrawing into his tent, and, like an actor rather than a real king, laying aside his stage-robes of royalty, he put on some common clothes and stole away. He was no sooner gone but the mutinous army were fight- ing and quarrelling for the plunder of his tent, but Pyrrhus, coming immediately, took possesion of the camp without a blow, after which he, with Lysimachus, parted the realm of Macedon betwixt them, after Demetrius had securely held it just seven years. As for Demetrius, being thus suddenly despoiled of every thing, he retired to Cassandrea. His wife Phila, in the passion of her grief, could not endure to see her hap- less husband reduced to the condition of a private and banished man. She refused to entertain any further hope, and, resolving to quit a fortune which was never permanent except for calamity, took poison and died. Demetrius, determining stUl to hold on by the wreck, went off to Greece, and collected his friends and officers there. Menelaus, in the play of Sophocles, to give an image of his vicissitudes of estate, says, — For me, my destiny, alas, is found Whirling upon the gods' swift wheel around. And changing still, and as the moon's fair frame Cannot continue for two nights the same, But out of shadow first a crescent shows, Thence into beauty and perfection grows, And when the form of plenitude it wears, Dwindles again, and wholly disappears. The simile is yet truer of Demetrius and the phases of his fortunes, now on the increase, presently on the