The Historians' History of the World 04

After uninterrupted prosperity in Greece, throughout the summer of 302 B.C., Demetrius returned from Leucas to Athens, about the month of September, near the time of the Eleusinian mysteries. He was welcomed by festive processions, hymns, pæans, choric dances, and bacchanalian odes of joyous congratulation. One of these hymns is preserved, sung by a chorus of ithyphalli—masked revellers, with their heads and arms encircled by wreaths—clothed in white tunics, and in feminine garments.

Effusions such as these, while displaying unmeasured idolatry and subservience towards Demetrius, are yet more remarkable, as betraying a loss of force, a senility, and a consciousness of defenceless and degraded position, such as we are astonished to find publicly proclaimed at Athens. It is not only against the foreign potentates that the Athenians avow themselves incapable of self-defence, but even against the incursions of the Ætolians,—Greeks like themselves, though warlike, rude, and restless. When such were the feelings of a people—once the most daring, confident, and organising, and still the most intelligent, in Greece, we may see that the history of the Greeks as a separate nation or race is reaching its close; and that from henceforward they must become merged in one or other of the stronger currents that surround them.

After his past successes, Demetrius passed some months in enjoyment and luxury at Athens. He was lodged in the Parthenon, being considered as the guest of the goddess Athene. But his dissolute habits provoked the louder comments, from their being indulged in such a domicile; while the violences which he offered to beautiful youths of good family led to various scenes truly tragical. The subservient manifestations of the Athenians towards him, however, continued unabated. It is even affirmed that, in order to compensate for something which he had taken amiss, they passed a formal decree, on the proposition of Stratocles, declaring that everything which Demetrius might command was holy in regard to the gods, and just in regard to men. The banishment of Demochares is said to have been brought on by his sarcastic comments upon this decree. In the month Munychion (April) Demetrius mustered his forces and his Grecian allies for a march into Thessaly against Cassander; but before his departure, he was anxious to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries. It was however not the regular time for this ceremony; the Lesser Mysteries being celebrated in February, the Greater in September. The Athenians overruled the difficulty by passing a special vote, enabling him to be initiated at once, and to receive in immediate succession the preparatory and the final initiation, between which ceremonies a year of interval was habitually required. Accordingly, he placed himself disarmed in the hands of the priests, and received both first and second initiation in the month of April, immediately before his departure from Athens.

BATTLE OF IPSUS

[301-294 B.C.]

Demetrius conducted into Thessaly an army of fifty-six thousand men, of whom twenty-five thousand were Grecian allies—so extensive was his sway at this moment over the Grecian cities. But after two or three months of hostilities, partially successful, against Cassander, he was summoned into Asia by Antigonus to assist in meeting the formidable army of the allies—Ptolemy, Seleucus, Lysimachus, and Cassander. Before retiring from Greece, Demetrius concluded a truce with Cassander, whereby it was stipulated that the Grecian cities, both in Europe and Asia, should be permanently autonomous and free from garrison or control. This stipulation served only as an honourable pretext for leaving Greece; Demetrius had little expectation that it would be observed. In the ensuing spring was fought the decisive battle of Ipsus in Phrygia (300 B.C.), by Antigonus and Demetrius, against Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Lysimachus; with a large army and many elephants on both sides. Antigonus, completely defeated, was slain; his age was more than eighty years. His Asiatic dominion was broken up, chiefly to the profit of Seleucus, whose dynasty became from henceforward ascendant, from the coast of Syria eastward to the Caspian Gates and Parthia; sometimes, though imperfectly, farther eastward, nearly to the Indus.