Deme'trius
1. Demetrius, surnamed the Handsome (
ὁ καλός), whom he had by Ptolemais, daughter of Ptolemy Soter, and who was consequently brother of Antigonus Gonatas.
He was first married to Olympias of Larissa, by whom he had a son Antigonus, surnamed Doson, who afterwards succeeded to the throne of Macedonia. (Euseb. Arm. i. p 161, fol. ed.)
After the death of Magas, king of Cyrene, his widow, Arsinoe, wishing to obtain support against Ptolemy, sent to Macedonia to offer the hand of her daughter Berenice, and with it the kingdom of Cyrene, to Demetrius, who readily embraced the offer, repaired immediately to Cyrene, and established his power there without opposition. How long he continued to hold it we know not; but he is said to have given general offence by his haughty and unpopular manners, and carried on a criminal intercourse with his mother-in-law, Arsinoe.
This was deeply resented by the young queen, Berenice, who caused him to be assassinated in her mother's arms. (Justin,
26.3; Euseb. Arm. i. pp. 157, 158; Niebuhr's
Kleine, Schriften. p. 229; Droysen,
Hellenism. ii. p. 292, &c.)
According to a probable conjecture of Droysen's (ii. p. 215), it must have been this Demetrius, and not, as stated by Justin (
26.2), the son of Antigonus Gonatas, who defeated Alexander of Epeirus when he invaded Macedonia.
