242 DEMETRIUS AND ANTONY. attention, lils spear was not wreathed with ivy, nor hia helmet redolent of unguents ; he did not come out to battle from the women's chamber, but, hushing the bac- chanal shouts and putting an end to the orgies, he be- came at once, as Em'ipides calls it, " the minister of the unpriestly Mars ; " and, in short, he never once incurred disaster through indolence or self-indulgence. AVliereas Antony, like Hercules in the picture where Omphale is seen removing his club and stripping him of his lion's skin, was over and over again disarmed by Cleopatra, and beguiled away, while great actions and enterprises of the first necessity fell, as it were, from his hands, to go with her to the sea-shore of Canopus and Taphosiris, and play about. And in the end, like another Paris, he left the battle to fly to her arms; or rather, to say the truth, Paris fled when he was already beaten ; Antony fled first, and, to follow Cleopatra, abandoned his victory. There was no law to prevent Demetrius from marrying several wives ; from the time of Philip and Alexander, it had become usual with Macedonian kings, and he did no more than was done by Lysimachus and Ptolemy. And those he married he treated honorably. But Antony, first of all, in marrying two wives at once, did a thing which no Eoman had ever allowed himself; and then he drove away his lawful Roman wife to please the foreign and unlawful woman. And so Demetrius incurred no liarm at all ; Antony procured his ruin by his marriage. On the other hand, no licentious act of Antony's can be charged with that impiety which marks those of Deme- trius. Historical writers tell us that the very dogs are excluded from the whole Acropolis, because of their gross, uncleanly habits. The very Parthenon itself saw Deme- trius consorting with harlots and debauching free women of Athens. The vice of cruelty, also, remote as it seems
