Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/160

 152 DEMETRIUS. letters to the rest of the kings, and to Seleucus himself, making entreaties, and offering not only to surrender wliatever they had left, but himself to be a hostage for his father. Many cities, also, and princes joined in inter- ceding for him ; only Lysimachus sent and offered a large sum of money to Seleucus to take away his life. But he, ■who had always shown his aversion to Lysimachus before, thought him only the greater barbarian and monster for it. Nevertheless, he still protracted the time, reserving the favor, as he professed, for the intercession of Anti- ochus and Stratonice. Demetrius, who had sustained the first stroke of his misfortune, in time grew so familiar with it, that, by con- tinuance, it became easy. At first he persevered one way or other in taking exercise, in hunting, so far as he had means, and in riding. Little by little, however, after a while, he let himself grow indolent and indisposed for them, and took to dice and drinking, in which he passed most of his time, whether it were to escaj^e the thoughts of his present condition, with which he was haunted when sober, and to drown reflection in drunkenness, or that he acknowledged to himself that this was the real happy life he had long desired and wished for, and had foolishly let himself be seduced away from it by a sense- less and vain ambition, which had only brought trouble to himself and others ; that highest good which he had thought to obtain by arms and fleets and soldiers, he had now discovered unexpectedly in idleness, leisure, and re- pose. As, indeed, what other end or period is there of all the wars and dangers which hapless princes run into, whose misery and folly it is, not merely that they make luxury and pleasure, instead of virtue and excellence, the object of their lives, but that they do not so much as know where this luxury and pleasui'e are to be found ? Plaving thus continued three years a prisoner in Cher-