22 Plutarch’s Lives
43 lines✦
aint yellow colour; and to make the omen yet greater, all thethings that were dyed for common use, took the natural colour.While a candidate for initiation was washing a young pig in thehaven of Cantharus, a shark seized him, bit off all his lower partsup to the belly, and devoured them, by which the god gave themmanifestly to understand, that having lost the lower town andsea-coast, they should keep only the upper city. Menyllus was sufficient security that the garrison shouldbehave itself inoffensively. But those who were now excludedfrom the franchise by poverty amounted to more than twelvethousand; so that both those that remained in the city thoughtthemselves oppressed and shamefully used, and those who orthis account left their homes and went away into Thrace, whereAntipater offered them a town and some territory to inhabit,regarded themselves only as a colony of slaves and exiles. Andwhen to this was added the deaths of Demosthenes at Calauria,and of Hyperides at Cleonz, as we have elsewhere related, thecitizens began to think with regret of Philip and Alexander, andalmost to wish the return of those times. And as, after Anti-gonus was slain, when those that had taken him off were afflict-ing and oppressing the people, a countryman in Phrygia, diggingin the fields, was asked what he was doing, “I am,” said he,fetching a deep sigh, “ searching for Antigonus;” so said manythat remembered those days, and the contests they had withthose kings, whose anger, however great, was yet generous andplacable; whereas Antipater, with the ceunterfeit humility ofappearing like a private man, in the meanness of his dress andhis homely fare, merely belied his real love of that arbitrarypower, which he exercised, as a cruel master and despot, todistress those under his command. Yet Phocion had interestwith him to recall many from banishment by his intercessionand prevailed also for those who were driven out, that they mightnot, like others, be hurried beyond Tznarus, and the mountain:of Ceraunia, but remain in Greece, and plant themselves irPeloponnesus, of which number was Agnonides, the sycophantHe was no less studious to manage the affairs within the citywith equity and moderation, preferring constantly those tha’were men of worth and good education to the magistracies, ancrecommending the busy and turbulent talkers, to whom it waa mortal blow to be excluded from office and public debatingto learn to stay at home, and be content to till their land. Aneobserving that Xenocrates paid his alien-tax as a foreigner, hoffered him the freedom of the city, which he refused, sayin
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