DEMETRIUS. 107 should treat him with the same show of hospitable enter- tainment, with which Ceres and Bacchus are received ; and the citizen who exceeded the rest in the splendor and costhness of his reception should have a sum of money granted him from the public purse to make a sacred offering. Finally, they changed the name of the month of Munj^chion, and called it Demetrion ; they gave the name of the Demetrian to the odd day between the end of the old and the beginning of the new month ; and turned the feast of Bacchus, the Dionysia, into the Demetria, or feast of Demetrius. Most of these changes were marked by the divine displeasure. The sacred robe, in which, according to their decree, the figures of Deme- trius and Antigonus had been woven with those of Jupi- ter and Minerva, was caught by a violent gust of wind, while the proces.sion was conveying it through the Ceram- icus, aud was torn from the top to the bottom. A crop of hemlock, a plant which scarcely grew anywhere, even in the country thereabout, sprang up in abundance round the altars which they had erected to these new divinities. They had to omit the solemn procession at the feast of Bacchus, as upon the very day of its celebration there was such a severe and rigorous frost, coming quite out of its time, that not only the vines and fig-trees were killed, but almost all the wheat was destroyed in the blade. Accordingly, Philippides, an enemy to Stratocles, attacked him in a comedy, in the following versesi : — He for whom frosts that nipped your vines were sent, And for whose sins the holy robe was rent, Who grants to men the gods' own honors, he, Not the poor stage, is now the people's enemy. Philippides was a great favorite with king Lysimachus, from whom the Athenians received, for his sake, a variety of kindnesses. Lysimachus went so far as to think, it a
