ion, 1838, p. 634.]
[216] [As in the "Farnese" Hercules.]
[217] [The beauty and mien [of Demetrius Poliorcetes] were so inimitable
that no statuary or painter could hit off a likeness. His countenance
had a mixture of grace and dignity; and was at once amiable and awful;
and the unsubdued and eager air of youth was blended with the majesty of
the hero and the king.--Plutarch's _Lives_, Langhorne's Translation,
1838, p. 616.
Demetrius the Besieger rescued Greece from the sway of Ptolemy and
Cassander, B.C. 307. He passed the following winter at Athens, where
divine honours were paid to him under the title of "the Preserver"
([Greek: o(Sote/r]). He was "the shame of Greece in peace," by reason of
his profligacy--"the citadel was so polluted with his debaucheries, that
it appeared to be kept sacred in some degree when he indulged himself
only with such _Hetaerae_ as Chrysis, Lamia, Demo, and Anticyra." He was
the unspiritual ancestor of Charles the Second. Once when his father,
Antigonus, had been told that he was indisposed, "he went to see him;
and when he came to the door, he met one of his favourites going out. He
went in, however, and, sitting down by him, took hold of his hand. 'My
fever,' said Demetrius, 'has left me.' 'I knew it,' said Antigonus, 'for
I met it this moment at the door.'"--Plutarch's _Lives_, _ibid._, pp.
621-623.]
[218] {488}[Spercheus was a river-god, the husband of Polydora, the
daughter of Peleus. Peleus casts into the river the hair of his son
Achilles, in the pious hope that his son-in-law would accept the votive
offering, and grant the youth a safe return from the Trojan war. See
_Iliad_, xxiii. 140, _sqq._]
[219] {489}["Whosoever," says Bacon, "hath anything fixed in his person
that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in himself to
rescue and deliver himself from scorn; therefore, all deformed persons
are extreme bold; first, as in their own defence, as being exposed to
scorn, but in process of time by a general habit; also it stirreth in
them industry, and especially of this kind, to watch and observe the
weakness of others, that they may have somewhat to repay." (Essay
xliv.). Byron's "chief incentive, when a boy, to distinction was that
mark of deformity on his person, by an acute sense of which he was first
stung into the ambition of being great."--_Life_, p. 306.]
[220] [Timur Bey, or Timur Lang, _i.e._ "the lame Timur" (A.D.
1336-1405), was the founder of the M
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