Plutarch
46-119 A.C.E - Wrote in Greek
The Comparison of
Demetrius and Antony
Written 75 A.C.E.
Translated by John Dryden
The Comparison of Demetrius and Antony
By Plutarch
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
|
