The CDPD Public Domain Collection for CDTV 3/CDPDIII.bin/books/plutarch/demetrius&antony

Text File | 1992-07-31 | 7KB | 112 lines

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                     THE COMPARISON OF DEMETRIUS AND ANTONY
                                  by Plutarch
                           translated by John Dryden

  AS both are great examples of the vicissitudes of fortune, let us
first consider in what way they attained their power and glory.
Demetrius hired a kingdom already won for him by Antigonus, the most
powerful of the Successors, who, before Demetrius grew to be a man,
traversed 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 bequeath no great legacy of reputation to his son, who had
the boldness, nevertheless, to take upon him the government, to
which birth give him no claim, which had been held by Caesar, and
became the inheritor of his great labours. 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 himself, 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 ill-repute bear witness to his greatness. Antigonus considered
Antipater's daughter Phila, in spite of the disparity of her years, an
advantageous match for Demetrius. Antony was thought disgraced by
his marriage with Cleopatra, a queen superior in power and glory to
all, except Arsaces, who were kings in her time. Antony was so great
as to be thought by others worthy of higher things than his own
desires.
  As regards the right and justice of their aims at empire,
Demetrius need not be blamed for seeking to rule a people that had
always had a king to rule them. Antony, who enslaved the Roman people,
just liberated from the rule of Caesar, followed a cruel and
tyrannical object. His greatest and most illustrious work, his
successful war with Brutus and Cassius, was done to crush the
liberties of his country and of his fellow-citizens. Demetrius, till
he was driven to extremity, went on, without intermission, maintaining
liberty in Greece, and expelling the foreign garrisons from the
cities; not like Antony, whose boast was to have slain in Macedonia
those who had set up liberty in Rome. As for the profusion and
magnificence of his gifts, one point for which Antony is lauded,
Demetrius so far outdid them that what he gave to his enemies was
far more than Antony ever gave to his friends. Antony was renowned for
giving Brutus honourable burial; Demetrius did so to all the enemy's
dead, and sent the prisoners back to Ptolemy with money and presents.
  Both were insolent in prosperity, and abandoned themselves to
luxuries and enjoyments. Yet it cannot be said that Demetrius, in
his revellings and dissipations, ever let slip the time for action;
pleasures with him attended only the superabundance of his ease, and
his Lamia, like that of the fable, belonging only to his playful,
half-waking, half-sleeping hours. When war demanded his attention, his
spear was not wreathed with ivy, nor his helmet redolent of
unguents; he did not come out to battle from the women's chamber, but,
bushing the bacchanal shouts and putting an end to the orgies, he
became at once, as Euripides calls it, "the minister of the unpriestly
Mars; and, in short, he never once incurred disaster through indolence
or self-indulgence. Whereas 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 seashore 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, following 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 honourably. But Antony, first
of all, in marrying two wives at once, did a thing which no Roman
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
harm 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 Demetrius. 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 Demetrius
consorting with harlots and debauching free women of Athens. The
vice of cruelty, also, remote as it seems from the indulgence of
voluptuous desires, must be attributed to him, who, in the pursuit
of his pleasures, allowed or, to say more truly, compelled the death
of the most beautiful and most chaste of the Athenians, who found no
way but this to escape his violence. In one word, Antony himself
suffered by his excesses, and other people by those of Demetrius.
  In his conduct to his parents, Demetrius was irreproachable.
Antony gave up his mother's brother, in order that he might have leave
to kill Cicero, this itself being so cruel and shocking an act that
Antony would hardly be forgiven if Cicero's death had been the price
of this uncle's safety. In respect of breaches of oaths and
treaties, the seizure of Artabazes, and the assassination of
Alexander, Antony may urge the plea which no one denies to be true,
that Artabazes first abandoned and betrayed him in Media; Demetrius is
alleged by many to have invented false pretexts for his act, and not
to have retaliated for injuries, but to have accused one whom he
injured himself.
  The achievements of Demetrius are all his own work. Antony's noblest
and greatest victories were won in his absence by his lieutenants. For
their final disasters they have both only to thank themselves; not,
however, in an equal degree. Demetrius was deserted, the Macedonians
revolted from him; Antony deserted others, and ran away while men were
fighting for him at the risk of their lives. The fault to be found
with the one is that he had thus entirely alienated the affections
of his soldiers; the other's condemnation is that he abandoned so much
love and faith as he still possessed. We cannot admire the death of
either, but that of Demetrius excites our greater contempt. He let
himself become a prisoner, and was thankful to gain a three years'
accession of life in captivity. He was tamed like a wild beast by
his belly, and by wine; Antony took himself out of the world in a
cowardly, pitiful, and ignoble manner, but still in time to prevent
the enemy having his person in their power.


                               THE END