Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/126

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DEMETRIUS.

They gave him, as his lodging, the back temple^[1] in the Parthenon, and here he lived, under the immediate roof, as they meant it to imply, of his hostess, Minerva ; no reputable or well-conducted guest to be quartered upon a maiden goddess. When his brother Philip was once put into a house where three young women were living, Antigonus, saying nothing to him, sent for his quartermaster, and told him, in the young man's presence, to find some less crowded lodgings for him.

Demetrius, however, who should, to say the least, have paid the goddess the respect due to an elder sister, for that was the purport of the city's compliment, filled the temple with such pollutions that the place seemed least profaned when his license confined itself to common wo- men like Chrysis, Lamia, Demo, and Anticyra.

The fair name of the city forbids any further plain particulars; let us only record the severe virtue of the young Damocles, surnamed, and by that surname pointed out to Demetrius, the beautiful; who, to escape importunities, avoided every place of resort, and when at last followed into a private bathing room by Demetrius, seeing none at hand to help or deliver, seized the lid from the cauldron, and, plunging into the boiling water, sought a death untimely and unmerited, but worthy of the country and of the beauty that occasioned it. Not so Clesenetus, the son of Cleomedon, who, to obtain from Demetrius a letter of intercession to the people in behalf of his father, lately

↑ The back temple, or opisthodomos, was the portion entered from the east end. There were here two chambers, a sort of vestibule, the opisthodomos proper, and an inner chamber immediately at the back of the statue in the great western hall or hecatompedon. In this, probably, Demetrius was lodged; and this, it is supposed, was the original maiden-chamber, or Parthenon, the goddess's private apartment. When this name was applied to the whole temple, the term opisthodomos would be extended to include the inner as well as the outer chamber,

[1] The back temple, or opisthodomos, was the portion entered from the east end. There were here two chambers, a sort of vestibule, the opisthodomos proper, and an inner chamber immediately at the back of the statue in the great western hall or hecatompedon. In this, probably, Demetrius was lodged; and this, it is supposed, was the original maiden-chamber, or Parthenon, the goddess's private apartment. When this name was applied to the whole temple, the term opisthodomos would be extended to include the inner as well as the outer chamber,

[1]