Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/248

 COMPARISON OF DEMETRIUS AND ANTONY. As both are great examples of the vicissitudes of for- tune, let us first consider in what way they attained their power and glory. Demetrius heired a kingdom already won for him by Antigonus, the most powerful of the Suc- cessors,* who, before Demetrius grew to be a man, trav- ersed with his armies and subdued the greater part of Asia. Antony's father was well enough in other respects, but was no warrior, and could bequeathe no great legacy of reputation to his son, who had the boldness, neverthe- less, to take ujDon him the government, to which birth gave him no claim, which had been held by Ca3sar, and became the inheritor of his great labors. And such power did he attain, with only himself to thank for it, that, in a division of the whole empire into two portions, he took and received the nobler one ; and, absent him- self, by his mere subalterns and lieutenants often defeated the Parthians, and drove the barbarous nations of the Caucasus back to the Caspian Sea. Those very things that procured him iU-repute bear witness to his great- Greek historians by this title. (240)
 * The Successors of Alexander, the diadocld, usually known in the