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.
The effects of the battle of Ipsus were speedily felt in Greece. The Athenians passed a decree proclaiming themselves neutral, and excluding both the belligerent parties from Attica. Demetrius, retiring with the remnant of his defeated army, and embarking at Ephesus to sail to Athens, was met on the voyage by Athenian envoys, who respectfully acquainted him that he would not be admitted. At the same time, his wife Didamia, whom he had left at Athens, was sent away by the Athenians under an honourable escort to Megara, while some ships of war which he had left in the Piræus were also restored to him. Demetrius, indignant at this unexpected defection of a city which had recently heaped upon him such fulsome adulation, was still further mortified by the loss of most of his other possessions in Greece. His garrisons were for the most part expelled, and the cities passed into Cassandrian keeping or dominion. His fortunes were indeed partially restored by concluding a peace with Seleucus, who married his daughter. This alliance withdrew Demetrius to Syria, while Greece appears to have fallen more and more under the Cassandrian parties. It was one of these partisans, Lachares, who, seconded by Cassander’s soldiers, acquired a despotism at Athens such as had been possessed by the Phalerean Demetrius, but employed in a manner far more cruel and oppressive.
Various exiles from his tyranny invited Demetrius Poliorcetes, who passed over again from Asia into Greece, recovered portions of Peloponnesus, and laid siege to Athens. He blocked up the city by sea and land, so that the pressure of famine presently became intolerable. Lachares having made his escape, the people opened their gates to Demetrius, not without great fear of the treatment awaiting them. But he behaved with forbearance, and even with generosity. He spared them all, supplied them with a large donation of corn, and contented himself with taking military occupation of the city, naming his own friends as magistrates. He put garrisons, however, not only into Piræus and Munychia, but also into the hill called Museum, a part of the walled circle of Athens itself (298 B.C.).
While Demetrius was thus strengthening himself in Greece, he lost all his footing both in Cyprus, Syria, and Cilicia, which passed into the hands of Ptolemy and Seleucus. New prospects however were opened to him in Macedonia by the death of Cassander (his brother-in-law, brother of his wife Phila) and the family feuds supervening thereupon. Philippus, eldest son of Cassander, succeeded his father, but died of sickness after something more than a year. Between the two remaining sons, Antipater and Alexander, a sanguinary hostility broke out. Antipater slew his mother Thessalonice, and threatened the life of his brother, who in his turn invited aid both from Demetrius and from the Epirotic king Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus being ready first, marched into Macedonia, and expelled Antipater; receiving as his recompense the territory called Tymphæa (between Epirus and Macedonia) together with Acarnania, Amphilochia, and the town of Ambracia, which became henceforward his chief city and residence. Antipater sought shelter in Thrace with his father-in-law Lysimachus; by whose order, however, he was presently slain. Demetrius, occupied with other matters, was more tardy in obeying the summons; but, on entering into Macedonia, he found himself strong enough to dispossess and kill Alexander (who had indeed invited him, but is said to have laid a train for assassinating him), and seized the Macedonian crown; not without the assent of a considerable party, to whom the name and the deeds of Cassander and his sons were alike odious.
[294-279 B.C.]
Demetrius became thus master of Macedonia, together with the greater part of Greece, including Athens, Megara, and much of Peloponnesus. He undertook an expedition into Bœotia, for the purpose of conquering Thebes; in which attempt he succeeded, not without a double siege of that city. But Greece as a whole was managed by Antigonus (afterwards called Antigonus Gonatas) son of Demetrius, who maintained his supremacy unshaken during all his father’s life-time; even though Demetrius was deprived of Macedonia by the temporary combination of Lysimachus with Pyrrhus, and afterwards remained (until his death in 283 B.C.) a captive in the hands of Seleucus. After a brief possession of the crown of Macedonia successively by Seleucus, Ptolemy Ceraunus, Meleager, Antipater, and Sosthenes—Antigonus Gonatas regained it in 277 B.C. His descendants, the Antigonid kings, maintained it until the battle of Pydna in 168 B.C.; when Perseus, the last of them, was overthrown, and his kingdom incorporated with the Roman conquests.