Perseus made fresh accusations against Demetrius to his father. He alleged the preparations for his flight and the bribery of some who were to accompany him. The forged letter purporting to come from T. Quinctius, he said, was the strongest proof of his guilt. [2] No pronouncement was, however, made as to the infliction of any severe punishment, the intention was rather that he should be put to death secretly, not through any anxiety felt about him, but that Philip's designs against the Romans might not be revealed by a public sentence of death. [3] Philip was marching from Thessalonica to Demetrias, and he sent Demetrius, still accompanied by Didas, to Astraeum in Paeonia, and Perseus to Amphipolis, to receive the Thracian hostages. [4] It is said that as Didas was departing, Philip gave him instructions about putting his son to death. Didas arranged a sacrifice or else pretended to do so, and Demetrius was invited to the sacrificial banquet and went to Heraclea for the purpose. [5] It is said that poison was given to him at the banquet, and that as soon as he drank the goblet he became aware of it. [6] Very soon he was in great suffering., and he left the table and retired to his room. There he lay in agony exclaiming against his father's cruelty, and accusing his brother and Didas of murdering him. [7] Then one Thyrsis of Stubera and a Beroean named Alexander entered the room, threw the bed-clothes over his head and suffocated him. [8] In this way the unoffending youth was killed, as his enemies were not content with only one way of putting him to death.
Livy. History of Rome. English Translation by. Rev. Canon Roberts. New York, New York. E. P. Dutton and Co. 1912. 1. Livy. History of Rome. English Translation. Rev. Canon Roberts. New York, New York. E. P. Dutton and Co. 1912. 2.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.