Plutarch's closing synkrisis weighs the Hellenistic king Demetrius Poliorcetes against the Roman triumvir Mark Antony point by point, on power, generosity, cruelty, lust, oath-breaking, and the manner of their deaths.
This short comparison closes the paired Life of Demetrius and Life of Antony, the biographical unit Plutarch built around two famous wrecks of fortune: a Macedonian successor-king undone by drink and captivity, and a Roman triumvir undone by Cleopatra and civil war. Rather than narrate new events, Plutarch works through a series of categories in turn: how each man rose to power, how each behaved in prosperity, how each treated enemies and friends, how each handled money, women, oaths, and parents, and finally how each fell and how each died. Demetrius inherited a throne already built by his father Antigonus and ruled people accustomed to kings, while Antony seized Caesar's unearned legacy and, in Plutarch's judgment, enslaved a Roman people that had just thrown off monarchy.
The comparison proceeds vice by vice and virtue by virtue. Both men are granted real achievements, real generosity, and real charm, but Plutarch keeps finding Demetrius the lesser offender in category after category: more generous to enemies, more devoted to war even amid pleasure, less impious, blameless toward his parents where Antony sacrificed his uncle to spare Cicero's life. Antony's undoing by Cleopatra is likened to Heracles enslaved by Omphale and to Paris fleeing battle for Helen's arms, images that cast his passion as a mythic, almost fated weakness rather than mere vice. Yet Plutarch does not let Demetrius off easily either, cataloguing his sexual license inside the Parthenon itself and the citizens driven to suicide to escape his advances, concluding starkly that Antony wronged himself through lack of self-control while Demetrius wronged others.
The piece matters historically as a demonstration of Plutarch's moral-biographical method at its most explicit: he does not merely tell two lives in sequence, he forces the reader to adjudicate between two exemplars of the corrupting effects of absolute power on naturally gifted, likeable men. Because Demetrius belongs to the world of Alexander's successors and Antony to the last generation of the Roman Republic, the synkrisis also functions as an implicit comparison of Hellenistic monarchy and Roman power politics, asking whether inherited kingship or self-made empire corrupts a talented man more thoroughly. Its final judgment on their deaths, censuring Demetrius for clinging to three tame years of captivity while praising nothing in Antony's suicide but its courage, gives the whole double biography its verdict.
“Since, then, great reversals of fortune befell both men, let us first look at the matter of power and reputation: to the one there was an inheritance already accomplished by others, since Antigonus, having become the mightiest of the Successors, before Demetrius came of age had overrun and mastered most of Asia;”
— Comparison Of Demetrius And Antony
“Antony, born of a father who was otherwise agreeable, but unwarlike and left him nothing great to be proud of, dared to aim at Caesar's power, which belonged to him by no family right at all, and made himself the successor to what that man had labored to build.”
— Comparison Of Demetrius And Antony
“Antony, on the other hand — just as we see in paintings Heracles' club being stolen away by Omphale, and his lion-skin stripped from him — was again and again disarmed and bewitched by Cleopatra, and persuaded by her to let great undertakings and necessary campaigns slip from his hands, and to idle and play about with her on the shores near Canopus and Taphosiris.”
— Comparison Of Demetrius And Antony
“In sum: Antony wronged himself through his lack of self-control, but Demetrius wronged others.”
— Comparison Of Demetrius And Antony
“Concerning how they died, praise is due to neither man, though Demetrius deserves the greater censure. For he submitted to becoming a captive, and once shut up, was content to gain three more years of life, having grown tame to wine and his belly like a beast. Antony died a cowardly, pitiable, and dishonorable death, and yet, before the enemy could become master of his body, he took himself out of life.”
— Comparison Of Demetrius And Antony
It is the short synkrisis, or formal comparison, that Plutarch appends to close his paired biographies of Demetrius Poliorcetes and Mark Antony. Rather than tell new events, it runs through categories such as power, generosity, cruelty, women, oaths, and death, judging each man in turn against the other.
Plutarch explains at the outset that both men experienced great reversals of fortune, rising to extraordinary power and then falling through their own faults. He also saw in both men gifted, likeable natures corrupted by absolute power and by women, which made them useful moral exemplars set side by side.
The verdict is mixed by category. Demetrius is judged the lesser offender in generosity, devotion to war, and blamelessness toward his parents, but is judged more impious and more sexually cruel, and Plutarch states outright that Antony wronged himself while Demetrius wronged others.
He compares Antony's enslavement to Cleopatra to two myths: Heracles disarmed by Omphale, and Paris fleeing the battlefield for Helen's embrace. Both images cast Antony's passion as a legendary, almost fated weakness rather than an ordinary moral failing.
He praises neither, but ranks Demetrius the more shameful case: Demetrius accepted captivity and lived three more tame years given over to wine and appetite, while Antony's death, though cowardly and pitiable, was at least self-inflicted before his enemies could seize his body.
No. Plutarch stresses that Demetrius inherited a kingdom already built by his father Antigonus over a people accustomed to monarchy, whereas Antony seized Caesar's legacy without any family right and, in Plutarch's judgment, imposed tyranny on a Roman people that had just cast off kingship.
Plutarch credits Antony's famous lavishness but argues Demetrius exceeded him, since Demetrius extended generosity even to enemies, giving full burial rites to all the enemy dead and returning captives to Ptolemy with money and gifts, while Antony's celebrated gesture was limited to burying Brutus.
It closes the paired Life of Demetrius and Life of Antony, one of Plutarch's Hellenistic-Roman pairings that sets a Macedonian successor-king against a Roman triumvir to probe how absolute power corrupts naturally talented men in both Greek and Roman political worlds.
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