As both are great examples of the vicissitudes of fortune, let
us first consider in what way they attained their power and
glory. Demetrius heired 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
gave him no claim, which had been held by Caesar, and became the
inheritor of his great labors. 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
honorable 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 revelings 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, belonged 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, hushing 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, 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 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.