United States or Jordan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Duris, however, who even where he has no private feeling concerned, is not wont to keep his narrative within the limits of truth, is the more likely upon this occasion to have exaggerated the calamities which befell his country, to create odium against the Athenians.
His army consisted of about thirty thousand foot, and four thousand horse; and Aristobulus says, he had not a fund of over seventy talents for their pay, nor more than thirty days' provision, if we may believe Duris.
In the meantime, Alexander sent to Athens, requiring ten of their orators to be delivered up to him, as Idomeneus and Duris have reported, but as the most and best historians say, he demanded these eight only: Demosthenes, Polyeuctus, Ephialtes, Lycurgus, Moerocles, Demon, Callisthenes, and Charidemus.
Little credit, perhaps, can be given to what Duris the Samian, who professed to be descended from Alcibiades, adds, that Chrysogonus, who had gained a victory at the Pythian games, played upon his flute for the galleys, whilst the oars kept time with the music; and that Callippides, the tragedian, attired in his buskins, his purple robes, and other ornaments used in the theater, gave the word to the rowers, and that the admiral galley entered into the port with a purple sail.
Duris reports that Eumenes, the Cardian, was the son of a poor wagoner in the Thracian Chersonesus, yet liberally educated, both as a scholar and a soldier; and that while he was but young, Philip, passing through Cardia, diverted himself with a sight of the wrestling-matches and other exercises of the youth of that place, among whom Eumenes performing with success, and showing signs of intelligence and bravery, Philip was so pleased with him, as to take him into his service.
His countenance was so composed, that scarcely was he ever seen by any Athenian either laughing, or in tears. He was rarely known, so Duris has recorded, to appear in the public baths, or was observed with his hand exposed outside his cloak, when he wore one.
There is more constancy in suffering the chain we are tied to than in breaking it, and more pregnant evidence of fortitude in Regulus than in Cato; 'tis indiscretion and impatience that push us on to these precipices: no accidents can make true virtue turn her back; she seeks and requires evils, pains, and grief, as the things by which she is nourished and supported; the menaces of tyrants, racks, and tortures serve only to animate and rouse her: "Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus Nigrae feraci frondis in Algido, Per damma, percmdes, ab ipso Ducit opes, animumque ferro."
And round about the stone coffin these verses were graven, in the Latin tongue, being, according as it is said, composed by King Don Alfonso himself. And upon his tomb he ordered these verses to be graven also: QUANTUM ROMA POTENS BELLICIS EXTOLLITUR ACTIS, VIVAX ARTHURUS FIT GLORIA QUANTUM BRITANNIS, NOBILIS E CAROLO QUANTUM GAUDET FRANCIA MAGNO, TANTUM IBERIA DURIS CID INVICTOS CLARET.
Word Of The Day