open light. The nobleman, to whom he revealed the story of his birth, either really or pretendedly convinced of its truth, treated him with corresponding respect, and made known the circumstance. Boris, becoming acquainted with the existence of a competitor, endeavoured by bribes and menaces to get possession of his person, and, upon their failure, sent emissaries to assassinate him. Alarmed for his safety, Wiesnovitski recommended him to the protection of Mnieski palatine of Sendomir, one of the most powerful nobles in Poland, who received him with great cordiality, and promised to use his utmost endeavours to raise him to the throne of Russia, provided he would tolerate the Roman-catholic religion. This Demetrius readily promised, and even himself secretly adopted that religion. He also was betrothed to the palatine's daughter. In 1603 he was introduced to Sigismund king of Poland; and being admitted to an audience before the diet, he related his pretended escape from murder by the substitution of another victim in his stead, and his subsequent adventures, in so plausible a manner, as to excite the belief and sympathy of the assembly. They declined, however, taking any public steps in his favour, but suffered him to engage all the private assistance that offered. He raised a body of 4000 Poles, with which he entered Russia in 1604; and being joined by many Russians and Cossacs of the Don, he defeated an army sent to oppose him. In a subsequent battle, however, he sustained a defeat with great loss; but this success not being improved by Zuiski, the Russian general, he had time to recruit his army, and render himself formidable again. The renewed attempts of Boris to assassinate him, only tended to convince the people of his being the real Demetrius, and an insurrection in his favour took place in Moscow itself, but was soon quelled. The sudden death of Boris, which soon after happened, was of great advantage to the cause of Demetrius. The principal officers of the army deserted young Feodor who had been declared his father's successor; the troops which adhered to him were defeated, the people everywhere declared for Demetrius, and the inhabitants of Moscow, again revolting, deposed and strangled Feodor, and received Demetrius in triumph. Maria, the widow of Ivan Basilovitz, was brought from a monastery in which she had been confined, and publicly acknowledged Demetrius as her son, who was solemnly crowned czar, and received the general homage of the nation. He is described as possessing

lively parts, and adorned with many liberal accomplishments, but rash, fickle, imprudent, and voluptuous. Like many other adventurers, he displayed more vigour in attaining his object, than ability or discretion in supporting an elevated condition. He began to shew his brutal and licentious disposition by debauching the daughter of Boris, and then shutting her up in a convent. He was surrounded by foreign guards, and manifested a distrust of the Russians, whom he came at length to treat with injustice and insult. He not only refused to adopt the customs of the Russian nation, but displayed open contempt for them; and in particular he rendered himself odious by his want of reverence for the ceremonies of the Greek religion. He was lavish in his bounty to foreign favourites, and exhausted the treasury by profuse and ill-judged expences. His marriage with Marina, the daughter of the Polish palatine Mnieski, still further alienated the Russians, by the preference it induced him to display for the manners and religion of the Poles. The populace began to regard him "as a heretic, worse than a Turk, and certainly not the son of czar Ivan." A conspiracy had been formed against him, headed by prince Zuiski, the former general of Boris, which was discovered, and quelled. Zuiski and his brothers were condemned to death, but Demetrius, who seems to have been of a mild and merciful disposition, was contented with sending them into banishment, whence he soon after recalled them. Zuiski again took the lead among the malcontents, and inflamed their disaffection. This at length broke out into an insurrection, in which all the Poles who were met in the streets of Moscow were assassinated, and Demetrius himself was taken, after attempting to escape from a window in his palace, and was charged with being an impostor. As he appealed to his supposed mother's declaration in his favour, she was again interrogated, and either privately or publicly revoked her former acknowledgment, as being extorted by fear, and asserted the early death of the true Demetrius. In the end, the unhappy czar was pierced with numerous wounds, and every indignity was offered by the enraged populace to his remains. This catastrophe happened in May, 1606, when he had possessed the sovereign power about eleven months. The greater part of historians, especially the native ones, consider him as an impostor; but some have held him to be the real Demetrius, and advanced many arguments in proof of their position, a summary of which is given

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After him four counterfeit Demetriuses appeared in succession, all of whom obtained temporary credit. The second of them proceeded so far, as, after two victories over the troops of Zuiski, then czar, to lay siege to Moscow. He was even acknowleged as her real husband by Marina the widow of the Demetrius of the preceding article. At length he came to a violent end, like the rest of the impostors. Mod. Univers. Hist. Coxe's Travels in Russia, &c.-A.

DEMETRIUS, PHALEREUS, an illustrious philosopher of the peripatetic school, was a disciple of Theophrastus, and flourished at Athens about three centuries before the christian era. In the 4th year of the 115th olympiad, or 317 years B.C. he was appointed by Cassander king of Macedon to the government of that city; which he conducted for ten years with such wisdom and moderation, that he acquired an uncommon share of popularity, and is reported to have had 360 brazen statues erected in his honour, out of gratitude for the improvements introduced by him into the finances, and the public buildings with which he had ornamented the city. But envy created him enemies, who took advantage of the popular jealousy for which the Athenians were so remarkable, and, during his occasional absence from the city, were so successful in their intrigues that they procured a sentence of death to be passed against him. He was fortunate enough to escape their attempts upon his person; but his effects were plundered, and all his statues thrown down. When information was brought to him of these outrages, he calmly observed, that he possessed at least this consolation, that they could not rob him of the virtues which had been once honoured by those testimonies of public approbation. To avoid the resentment of the Athenians, he first withdrew to the protection of Cassander; and afterwards removed to the court of Ptolemy Soter, king of Egypt, who admitted him to his confidence and friendship. That prince is even said to have consulted him on the choice of his successor; when Demetrius embraced the interests of the king's sons by his wife Eurydice, in preference to his son by Berenice, who afterwards reigned under the name of Ptolemy Philadelphus. But the king rejected his advice, and associated the son of Berenice with him in the government during his life. On his father's death that prince, out of resentment against Demetrius for the counsel which he had given,

banished him to a distant province, where in a short time he lost his life by the bite of an asp. Demetrius Phalereus was the author of more works, in prose and verse, on philosophy, history, politics, criticism, rhetoric, &c. than any other Peripatetic of his time. In the particulars of his life given by Diogenes Laertius, the subjects of many of them are enumerated. None of them, however, have reached our day; for the elegant rhetorical treatise περὶ ἑρμηνείας, or concerning interpretation, which some writers ascribe to him, is most probably a work of later date. According to the representations of Aristæus, Aristobulus, Philo, Josephus, and several of the christian fathers, who too easily adopted their opinions, Demetrius Phalereus was librarian to Ptolemy Philadelphus, and, besides forming a noble collection of above 200,000 volumes, obtained a royal mandate which produced the translation of the Jewish scriptures from the Hebrew, commonly called the Septuagint. Many able critics, however, have entertained doubts with respect to the credit due to their testimony. To reconcile it with the positive statement of Laertius, that Demetrius was banished when Ptolemy Philadelphus succeeded his father, Vossius and others suppose that the collection was made, and the mandate issued, during the period while Ptolemy Philadelphus reigned conjointly with Ptolemy Soter. But this hypothesis appears more ingenious than satisfactory; especially when it is considered, that, most probably, the Septuagint version was produced by the private labours of the Jews, and not in consequence of any royal order. Diog. Laert. lib. v. Vossius de Hist. Grac. lib. i. cap. xii. Moreri. Enfield's Hist. Phil. vol. I.-M.

DEMETRIUS, of Corinth, was a cynic philosopher, who flourished in the first century. During the reign of the emperor Caligula he taught philosophy at Rome, where he acquired a high reputation for wisdom and virtue, and the unabashed freedom with which he reproved the corrupt manners of the age. In the reign of Nero he was banished from that city, because he was too honest not to protest against the scandalous vices which were practised by that prince and his courtiers. At his death he returned to Rome; but having offended Vespasian by the boldness of his language, was again sent into exile. Apollonius Tyanæus, with whom he had contracted an intimate friendship, prevailed upon Titus once more to recal him; but he was afterwards involved in the common fate of the philosophers, under the reign of Domitian. He had the boldness to

Socrates in making philosophy not a speculative science, but rule of life and manners. He was virtuous without ostentation, or affecting any ridiculous singularities, and possessed the happy art of reproving vice and folly without acrimony, and in a manner the most likely to produce good effect. So high was the reputation and esteem in which he was held, that his opinion often determined the resolutions of the Athenian people in their assemblies; and after his death he was honoured with a public funeral, attended by a numerous train of philosophers, and others who lamented the loss of such an excellent character. Moreri. Enfield's Hist. Phil. vol. II.—M.

DEMOSTHENES, the most celebrated orator of ancient Greece, born about B.C. 381, was the son of a citizen of Athens of the same name, who carried on a great manufacture of sword blades. Demosthenes was left an orphan at the age of seven, with a fortune estimated at fifteen talents (about 2900l.) He was of a slender and weakly habit of body, whence his mother would not permit him to engage in laborious exercises; and the unfaithfulness of his guardians deprived him of those advantages in literary tuition which he might have expected. His ambition to become an orator first developed itself in his seventeenth year, when he was taken to hear the pleadings in a public cause of great expectation. The honour paid to the successful orator fired him with emulation; and he thenceforth bad adieu to all other objects of juvenile pursuit, and assiduously applied to the art of declamation. His master in rhetoric was Isæus; and he is said also to have been a hearer of Plato, from whom he borrowed his magnificence of diction. The first exercise of his eloquence was at the expiration of his minority, when he called his guardians to account for the management of his fortune; and by their skill in chicane he was enabled to acquire considerable experience at the bar, though at the expence of great part of his patrimony. Several natural defects, however, impeded his progress, and caused him to undergo various mortifications in his addresses to the people. His voice was weak and stammering, his pronunciation indistinct, and his gestures ungraceful. To amend these faults he employed incessant labour and attention. He declaimed in a subterraneous apartment, that he might not be heard or disturbed, and sometimes never quitted it for two or three months together. He likewise exercised his voice on the sea-shore, or walking up hill, and, as it is said, with pebbles in his mouth;

though this would seem an indifferent cure for thick speaking. He practised gesture before a mirror, and took lessons from an eminent actor. By these means he so far overcame his natural deficiencies as to attain distinguished excellence both in action and elocution. At the same time he did not neglect the study of language and the art of composition, by which alone, indeed, the real genius of an orator is displayed, and his fame is transmitted to after-ages. Extempore speaking was not his talent, at least at the beginning of his career, and his orations were said to "smell of the lamp ;" yet there are instances of his speaking unpremeditatedly with great force upon some important occasions. In his manner he chiefly imitated Pericles, as he did likewise in his general attention to come well prepared when he was to speak in public. The tone he assumed in his addresses to the people was that of a man of virtue and patriotism, who in a manly way censured them for their prevailing follies and vices, and inculcated vigour in action, and independence in principle. At this time the growing power of Philip king of Macedon was an object of apprehension to the neighbouring Greek states; and Demosthenes took the lead among those who were most earnest in rousing the Athenians to a sense of the common danger. Their corruption and degeneracy, however, rendered them little fitted for the arduous task of protecting the liberties of Greece, and some of the wisest citizens thought it more for the interest of Athens to cultivate that friendly disposition which Philip always displayed towards the city. At the head of these was Phocion, who, on all occasions, opposed the violence of the people; and when Demosthenes once told him that the Athenians would some day murder him in a mad fit, he answered, " And you too, perhaps, in a sober fit."

He began to engage in the public concerns of the state in the Phocian or sacred war, when he was in his twenty-seventh year; but it was supposed that, in addition to purely patriotic motives, he was swayed in the counsels he gave by the influence of Persian gold. The Olynthic war called forth all the eloquence of Demosthenes in opposition to the ambitious schemes of Philip. Three orations which he delivered on this topic are extant, and are admirable specimens of that clear statement of arguments by which he carried political points with his countrymen. When Philip had assembled an army for the invasion of Attica, Demosthenes was deputed to persuade the