lled. Demetrius had to retreat to Ephesus with his broken
army.

The Athenians, who had made so much of him before, now turned against
him, and made a law to punish with death anyone who should speak of
making peace with him. However, Cassander died, and his sons quarrelled
about the kingdom, so that Demetrius found it a good opportunity to
return to Greece, and very soon made the Athenians open their gates to
him, which they did in fear and trembling; but he treated them so
mercifully that they soon admired him as much as ever.

[Picture: Macedonian soldier] Then he attacked Sparta, and defeated her
king, taking the city which had so long held out against the Macedonians;
but he had only just done so when he heard that Ptolemy had recovered all
Cyprus except Salamina, and that Lysimachus had seized all Asia Minor, so
that nothing was left to him but his army.

But there was a wonderful change still to befall him. Cassander's
sons,--as has been said, were disputing for the kingdom. Their mother,
Thessalonica, a daughter of Philip of Macedon, favoured the youngest, and
this so enraged the eldest that he killed her with his own hand. His
brother called on Demetrius to help him, and he came with his army; but
on some fancy that the youth was plotting against him, he had him put to
death, and convinced the Macedonians that the act was just. They would
not have the murderer of his own mother as their king, but chose
Demetrius himself to be king of Macedon, so that almost at the same time
he lost one kingdom and gained another, and this last remained in his
family for several generations. He tried to regain Asia, but did not
succeed; indeed he was once again obliged to fly from Macedonia in
disguise. He had learned to admire the splendours of the East, wore a
double diadem on his head, and wonderful sandals; and he had also ordered
skilful weavers and embroiderers to make him a mantle, on which the
system of the universe as then understood--the earth in the centre, with
the moon, sun, and planets, and every fixed star then discovered--was to
be embroidered in gold.

The Macedonians had not been used to see their kings crowned at all, or
differently dressed from themselves, and they had hardly borne such
assumption of state from Alexander himself, in the height of his pomp and
glory, and when he had newly taken the throne of the kings of Persia; and
they were much offended at Demetrius' splendour, and still more at