Demetrius

Again, when the Athenians suffered their naval defeat near Amorgus,[*](In 322 B.C. A Macedonian fleet was victorious.) before the tidings of the disaster could reach the city he put a garland on his head and drove through the Cerameicus, and after announcing that the Athenians were victorious, moved a sacrifice of glad tidings and made a generous distribution of meat to the people by tribes. Then, a little later, when the wrecks were brought home from the battle and the people in their wrath called him out, he faced the tumult recklessly and said: What harm have I done you, pray, if for two days ye have been happy? Such was the effrontery of Stratocles.

But there are things hotter even than fire, as Aristophanes puts it.[*](Knights, 382.) For some one else, outdoing Stratocles in servility, proposed that whenever Demetrius visited the city he should be received with the hospitable honours paid to Demeter and Dionysus, and that to the citizen who surpassed all others in the splendour and costliness of his reception, a sum of money should be granted from the public treasury for a dedicatory offering.