and the young Aratus, to return that monarch thanks for the presents he had already bestowed on their republic, and the new offers he had made them. However, these ambassadors did not leave Achaia, because when they were preparing to set out, advice came that Ptolemy was dead.

« This prince, after having overcome the rebels within his kingdom, as has been already mentioned, resolved to attack Seleucus, king of Syria. When he began to form the plan for carrying on this war, one of his principal officers asked, by what methods he would raise money for the execution of it. He replied, that his friends were his treasure. The principal courtiers concluded from this answer, that, as he considered their purses as the only fund he had to carry on this war, they were upon the point of being ruined by it. To prevent therefore that consequence, which had more weight with them than the allegiance they owed their sovereign, they caused him to be poisoned. This monarch was thus dispatched in his twenty-ninth year, after he had sitten twenty-four years on the throne. Ptolemy Philometor, his son, who was but six years of age, succeeded him, and Cleopatra his mother was declared regent.

CHAPTER II.

SECT. I.

-Perseus conspires against Demetrius. The latter is innocently put to death, and Perseus succeeds to the throne.

From the spreading of a report among the states contiguous to Macedonia, that such as went to Rome to complain against Philip were heard there, and many of them very fayourably; a great number of cities, and even private persons, made their complaints in that city against a prince who was a very troublesome neighbour to them all, with the hopes, either of having the injuries redressed which they pretended to have received, or at least to console themselves in some measure for them, by being allowed the liberty to deplore them. King Eumenes, among the rest, to whom, by order of the Roman commissioners and senate, the fortresses in Thrace were to be given up, sent ambassadors, at whose head was Athenæus his brother, to inform the senate, that Philip did not withdraw his garrisons in Thrace as he had promised; and to complain of his sending succours into Bithynia to Prusias, who was then at war with Eumenes.

a Hieron. in Daniel. 6 AM, 3821. Ant. J. C. 183, Liv. 1, xxxix. ¤, 46, 47. VOL. VII, F

Demetrius, the son of Philip, king of Macedon, was at that time in Rome, whither, as has been already mentioned, he had been sent by his father, in order to watch over his interests in that city. It was properly his business to answer the several accusations brought against his father: but the senate, imagining that this would be a very difficult task for sa young a prince, who was not accustomed to speak in public; to spare him that trouble, sent certain persons to him to inquire, whether the king his father had not given him some memorials; and contented themselves with his reading them. Philip therein justified himself to the best of his power, with respect to most of the articles which were exhibited against him; but he especially showed great disgust at the decrees which the Roman commissioners had enacted against him, and at the treatment he had met with from them. The senate saw plainly what all this tended to; and, as the young prince endeavoured to apologize for certain particulars, and assured them, that every thing should be done agreeably to the will of the Romans, the senate replied, that his father Philip could not have done more wisely, nor what was more agreeable to them, than in sending his son Demetrius to make his excuses. That, as to past transactions, the senate might dissemble, forget, and bear with a great many things; that, as to the future, they relied on the promise which Demetrius gave: that, although he was going to leave Rome, in order to return to Macedon, he left there (as the hostage of his inclinations) his own good heart and attachment for Rome, which he might retain inviolably without infringing in any manner the duty he owed his father: that out of regard to him, ambassadors should be sent to Macedon, to rectify, peaceably and without noise, whatever might have been hitherto amiss: and that as to the rest, the senate was well pleased to let Philip know, that he was obliged to his son Demetrius for the tenderness with which the Romans behaved towards him. These marks of distinction, which the senate gave him with the view of exalting his credit in his father's court, only animated envy against him, and at length occasioned his destruction.

a The return of Demetrius to Macedon, and the arrival of the ambassadors, produced different effects, according to the various dispositions of men's minds. The people, who extremely feared the consequences of a rupture with the Romans, and the war that was preparing, were highly pleased with Demetrius, from the hopes that he would be the mediator and author of a peace; not to mention that they considered him as the successor to the throne of Macedon, after the demise of his father. For though he was the younger

a Liv. I. xxxix. n. 53.

son, he had one great advantage over his brother, and that was, his being born of a mother who was Philip's lawful wife; whereas Perseus was the son of a concubine, and even reputed supposititious. Besides, it was not doubted but that the Romans would place Demetrius on his father's throne, Perseus not having any credit with them. And these were the common reports.

On one side also, Perseus was greatly uneasy; as he feared, that the advantage of being elder brother would be but a very feeble title against a brother superior to him in all other respects: and on the other, Philip, imagining that it would not be in his power to dispose of the throne as he pleased, beheld with a jealous eye, and dreaded the two great influence of his younger son. It was also a great mortification to him to see rising, in his life time, and before his eyes, a kind of second court in the concourse of Macedonians who crowded about Demetrius. The younge prince. himself did not take sufficient care to prevent or sooth the growing disaffection to his person. Instead of endeavouring to suppress envy, by gentleness, modesty, and complaisance, he only inflamed it, by a certain air of haughtiness which he had brought with him from Rome, valuing himself upon the marks of distinction with which he had been honoured in that city; and not scrupling to declare, that the senate had granted him many things which they had refused his father,

Philip's discontent was still more inflamed on the arrival of the new ambassadors, to whom his son paid his court more assiduously than to himself; and when he found he should be obliged to abandon Thrace, to withdraw his garrions from that country, and to execute other things, either pursuant to the decrees of the first commissioners, or to the fresh orders he had received from Rome; orders and decrees with which he complied very much against his will, and with the highest secret resentment; but with which he was forced to comply, to prevent his being involved in a war for which he was not sufficiently prepared. To remove all suspicion of his harbouring the least design that way, he carried his arms into the very heart of Thrace, against people with whom the Romans did not concern themselves in any man

ner.

a However, his schemes were not unknown at Rome. Marcius, one of the commissioners, who had communicated the orders of the senate to Philip, wrote to Rome to inform them, that all the king's discourses, and the several steps he took, visibly threatened an approaching war. To make himself the more secure of the maritime cities, he forced all the inhabitants, with their families, to leave them; settled them

a Liv. 1. xl. n. 3-5.

in the most northern part of Macedon; and substituted in their places Thracians, and other barbarous nations, on whom he believed he might more securely depend. These changes occasioned a general murmur in every part of Macedon; and all the provinces echoed with the cries and complaints of poor unhappy people, who were forced away from their houses, and their native place, to be confined in unknown countries. Nothing was heard on all sides but imprecations and curses against the king, who was the author of these innovations.

But Philip, so far from being moved at their grief, grew more cruel from it. All things were suspected by him, and gave him umbrage. He had put to death a great number of persons, upon suspicion that they favoured the Romans. He thought his own life could not be safe, but by retaining their children in his own power, and he imprisoned them under a strong guard, in order to have them all destroyed one after another. Nothing could be more horrid in itself than such a design; but the sad catastrophe of one of the most powerful and most illustrious families in Thessaly, made it still more

He had put to death, many years before, Herodicus, one of the principal persons of the country, and, some time after, his two sons-in-law. Theoxena and Archo, his two daughters, had continued widows, each of them having a son, both very young. Theoxena, who was sought for in marriage by the richest and most powerful noblemen in Thessaly, preferred widowhood to the nuptial state; but Archo married a nobleman of Ænea, called Poris, and brought him several children, whom Archo, dying early, left infants. Theoxena, that she might have an opportunity of bringing up her sister's children under her eye, married Poris; took the same care of them as she did of her own son; and was as tender of them as if she had been their mother. When news was brought her of Philip's cruel edict, to murder the children of those who had been put to death, plainly foreseeing that they would be given up to the brutal fury of the king and his officers, she formed a surprising resolution, declaring that she would imbrue her hands in the blood of all her children, rather than suffer them to fall into the merciless power of Philip. Poris, whose soul was struck with horror at this design, told her, in order to divert her from it, that he would send all their children to Athens, to some friends, on whose fidelity and humanity he could safely rely, and that he himself would convey them thither. Accordingly, they all set out from Thessalonica, in order to sail to the city of Ænea, to assist at a solemn festival, which was solemnized annually in honour of Æneas, their founder. Having spent the whole day in festi a Emathia, called formerly Poonia.

A. M. 3822. Ant. J. C, 182,

vity and rejoicing, about midnight, when every body else was asleep, they embarked, on board a galley which Poris had prepared for them, as if intending to return to Thessalonica, but, in reality, to go to Euboea; when unhappily a contrary wind prevented them from advancing forwards, in spite of their utmost efforts, and drove them back towards the coast. At day-break, the king's officers, who were posted to guard the port, having perceived them, immediately sent off an armed sloop; commanding the captain of it, upon the severest penalties, not to return without the galley. As it drew nearer, Poris was seen every moment, either exhorting the ship's company, in the strongest terms, to exert themselves to the utmost in order to get forward; or lifting up his hands to heaven, and imploring the assistance of the gods. In the mean time, Theoxena, resuming her former resolution, and presenting to her children the deadly dose she had prepared, and the daggers she had brought with her: "Death," says she, “alone can free you from your miseries; and here is "what will procure you that last, sad refuge. Secure your"selves from the king's horrid cruelty by the method you "like best. Go, my dear children, such of you as are more "advanced in years, and take these poinards; or, in case a "slower kind of death may be more grateful, take this poi“son.” The enemy were now nearly close to them, and the mother was very urgent. They obeyed her commands; and all, having either swallowed the deadly draughts, or plunged the daggers in their bosoms, were thrown into the sea. Theoxena, after giving her husband a last sad embrace, leaped into the sea with him. Philip's officers then seized the galley, but did not find one person alive in it.

The horror of this tragical event revived and inflamed, to a prodigious degree, the hatred against Philip. He was publicly detested as a bloody tyrant; and people vented, in all places, both against him and his children, dreadful imprecations, which, says Livy, soon had their effect; the gods having abandoned him to a blind fury, which prompted him to wreak his vengeance against his own children.

a

Perseus saw, with infinite pain and affliction, that the regard of the Macedonians for his brother Demetrius, and his credit and authority among the Romans, increased daily. Having now no hopes left of being able to ascend the throne but by criminal methods, he made them his only refuge. He began by sounding the disposition of those who were in greatest favour with the king, and by addressing them in obscure and ambiguous words. At first, some seemed not to enter: into his views, and rejected his proposals from believing that there was more to be hoped from Demetrius. But after

a Liv. l. xl. n. 5-16.