Note 217 — Scene I.—A Forest.

[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" (ὁ Σωτήρ). 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 Hetæræ 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.]