ABSTRACT
Demetrius was an Athenian citizen, something of a rarity in view of the strongly cosmopolitan student body at the Lyceum. Demetrius hailed from the old port of Athens, Phalerum, which lies to the east of the Piraeus. Demetrius' father Phanostratus was not noble, as Diogenes reports, but that is basically all we learn from him about Demetrius' family and ancestry. Diogenes is the only ancient author to state that Demetrius was not well–born, which he follows with a citation from Favorinus that he was from the house of Conon, i.e., a slave in the household of Conon. Immediately after the notice of Demetrius' death, Diogenes parades out his own epigram on Demetrius. Diogenes tells us that Demetrius, having been imprisoned in the Egyptian countryside by Ptolemy Philadelphus, spent his last days in dejection and died in his sleep from the effects of a snake bite.
