DEMETRIUS Phalereus, an orator and Peripatetic philosopher, was the scholar of Theophrastus. He acquired so much authority at Athens, that he governed the city for ten years, and ruled with so much wisdom and virtue that they set up thirty-six statues in honour of him. By the slanders of some malicious persons in his absence, he was, however, condemned to death, and his images were pulled down; but when Demetrius heard it, he remarked, they could not pull down that virtue in honour of which those images had been set up. He escaped into Egypt, and was protected by Ptolemy Lagus. This king, it is said, asked his advice concerning the succession of his children to the throne, whether he ought to prefer those whom he had had by Eurydice, to Ptolemy Philadelphus, whom he had had by Berenice; and Demetrius advised him to leave his crown to the former. This displeased Philadelphus so much, that when his father died, he banished Demetrius; and the unfortunate exile was afterwards killed by the bite of an asp. Demetrius composed more works in prose and in verse than any other peripatetic of his time; and his writings consisted of poetry, history, politics, rhetoric, harangues, and accounts of embassies. But none of them are extant except his rhetoric, which is usually printed among the Rhetores Selecti.