the ships of burden kept close to the shore with the stores.  The pride of Antigonus would not let him follow the advice of the sailors, and wait eight days till the north winds of the spring equinox had passed; and by this haste many of his ships were wrecked on the coast, while others were driven into the Nile and fell into the hands of Ptolemy.  Antigonus himself, marching with the land forces, found all the strong places well guarded by the Egyptian army; and, being driven back at every point, discouraged by the loss of his ships and by seeing whole bodies of his troops go over to Ptolemy, he at last took the advice of his officers and led back his army to Syria, while Ptolemy returned to Alexandria, to employ those powers of mind in the works of peace which he had so successfully used in his various wars.

Antigonus then turned the weight of his mighty kingdom against the little island of Rhodes, which, though in sight of the coast of Asia Minor, held itself independent of him, and in close friendship with Ptolemy.  The Dorian island of Rhodes had from the earliest dawn of history held a high place among the states of Greece; and in all the arts of civilised life, in painting, sculpture, letters, and commerce, it had been lately rising in rank while the other free states had been falling.  Its maritime laws were so highly thought of that they were copied by most other states, and, being afterwards adopted into the Pandects of Justinian, they have in part become the law of modern Europe.  It was the only state in which Greek liberty then kept its ground against the great empires of Alexander’s successors.

Against this little state Demetrius led two hundred long galleys and one hundred and seventy transports, with more than forty thousand men.  The Greek world looked on with deep interest while the veterans of Antigonus were again and again driven back from the walls of the blockaded city by its brave and virtuous citizens; who, while their houses were burning and their walls crumbling under the battering-ram, left the statues of Antigonus and Demetrius standing unhurt in the market-place, saved by their love of art and the remembrance of former kindness, which, with a true greatness of mind, they would not let the cruelties of the siege outweigh.  The galleys of Ptolemy, though unable to keep at sea against the larger fleet of Demetrius, often forced their way into the harbour with the welcome supplies of grain.  Month after month every stratagem and machine which the ingenuity of Demetrius could invent were tried and failed; and, after the siege had lasted more than a year, he was glad to find an excuse for withdrawing his troops; and the Rhodians in their joy hailed Ptolemy with the title of Soter or saviour.  This name he ever afterwards kept, though by the Greek writers he is more often called Ptolemy the son of Lagus.  If we search the history of the world for a second instance of so small a state daring to withstand the