Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/184

 176 ANTONY. wasted on objects like these. The whole of Asia was like tlio city in Sophocles, loaded, at one time, with incense in the air, JubUant songs, and outcries of despair. When he made his entry into Ephesus, the women met him dressed up like Bacchantes, and the men and boys like Satyrs and Fauns, and throughout the town nothing was to be seen but spears wreathed about with ivy, harps, flutes, and psaltries, while Antony in their songs was Bacchus the Giver of Joy and the Gentle. And so indeed he was to some, but to far more the Devourer and the Savage ; * for he would deprive persons of worth and quality of their fortunes to gratify villains and flatterers, who would sometimes beg the estates of men yet living, pretending they were dead, and, obtaining a grant, take possession. He gave his cook the house of a Magnesian citizen, as a reward for a single highly success- ful supper, and, at last, when he was proceeding to lay a second whole tribute on Asia, Hybreas, speaking on be- half of the cities, took courage, and told him broadly, but aptly enough for Antony's taste, " If you can take two yearly tributes, you can doubtless give us a couple of summers, and a double harvest time ; " and put it to him in the plainest and boldest way, that Asia had raised two hundred thousand talents for his service : " If this has not been paid to you, ask your collectors for it ; if it has, and is all gone, we are ruined men." These words touched Antony to the quick, who was simply ignorant of most their songs, but too often, in reahty, the Greeks, in the battle of Salamis, Omestes and Agrionius." These offered the Persian princes. See are all epithets applied in various the story in the lives of Theniistocles forms of worship to the Greek Dio- and Aristides. nysus or Bacchus. It was to Bac-
 * " Oharidotes and Meilichius in chus Omestes, the Devourer, that