also arms for seventy thousand men, which had been laid up of old, and two thousand soldiers with Dionysius, whom he delivered up, along with the stores, to Timoleon. But the tyrant reserved his money to himself; and having got on board a ship, he sailed, with a few of his friends, without being perceived by Icetes, and reached the camp of Timoleon.

Then it was that he first appeared in the humble figure of a private man;* and, as such, he was sent, with one ship, and a very moderate sum of money, to Corinth; he that was born in a splendid court, and educated as heir to the most absolute monarchy that ever existed. He held it for ten years;t and for twelve more, from the time that Dion took up arms against him, he was exercised continually in wars and troubles; insomuch that the mischiefs caused by his tyranny were abundantly recompensed upon his own head in what he suffered. He saw his sons die in their youth, his daughters deflowered, and his sister, who was also his wife, exposed to the brutal lusts of his enemies, and then slaughtered, with her children, and thrown into the sea, as we have related more particularly in the life of Dion.

When Dionysius arrived at Corinth, there was hardly a man in Greece that was not desirous to see him and discourse with him. Some hating the man, and rejoicing at his misfortunes, came for the pleasure of insulting him in his present distress; others, whose sentiments with respect to him were somewhat changed, and who were touched with compassion for his fate, plainly saw the influence of an invisible and divine power displayed in the affairs of feeble mortals; for neither nature nor art produced, in those times, any thing so remarkable as that work of fortune, which showed the man, who was lately sovereign of Sicily, now holding conversation in a butcher's shop at Corinth, or sitting whole days in a perfumer's; or drinking the diluted wine of taverns; or squabbling in the streets with lewd women; or directing female musicians in their singing, and disputing with them seriously about the harmony of certain airs that were sung in the theatre.§

Dionysius was born to absolute power, whereas most other tyrants, Dionysius the elder, for instance, had raised themselves to it, and some from a mean condition.

For he began his reign in the first year of the hundred and third Olympiad, three hundred and sixty-six years before the Christian era. Dion took arms against him in the fourth year of the hundred and fifth Olympiad; and he delivered up the citadel to Timoleon, and was sent to Corinth, in the first year of the hundred and ninth.

# Plutarch adds, nor art, to give us to understand that the tragic poets had not represented so signal a catastrophe in fable.

Some writers tell us that the extreme poverty to which he was re

Some were of opinion, that he fell into these unworthy amusements, as being naturally idle, effeminate, and dissolute; but others thought it was a stroke of policy, and that he rendered himself despicable to prevent his being feared by the Corinthians; contrary to his nature, affecting that meanness and stupidity, lest they should imagine the change of his circumstances sat heavy upon him, and that he aimed at establishing himself again.

Nevertheless, some sayings of his are recorded, by which it should seem that he did not bear his present misfortunes in an abject manner. When he arrived at Leucas, which was a Corinthian colony as well as Syracuse, he said, "He found himself in a situation like that of young men who had been guilty of some misdemeanour. For as they converse cheerfully, notwithstanding, with their brothers, but are abashed at the thought of coming before their fathers, so he was ashamed of going to live in the mother city, and could pass his days much more to his satisfaction with them." Another time, when a certain stranger derided him at Corinth, in a very rude and scornful manner, for having, in the meridian of his power, taken pleasure in the discourse of philosophers, and at last asked him,- "What he had got by the wisdom of Plato?" "Do you think," said he, "that we have reaped no advantage from Plato, when we bear in this manner such a change of fortune?" Aristoxenus the musician, and some others, having inquired, "What was the ground of his displeasure against Plato?" he answered,-"That absolute power abounded with evils; but had this great infelicity above all the rest, that among the number of those who call themselves the friends of an arbitrary prince, there is not one who will speak his mind. to him freely; and that by such false friends he had been deprived of the friendship of Plato."

Some one who had a mind to be arch, and to make merry with Dionysius, shook his robe when he entered his apartment, as is usual when persons approach a tyrant; and he, returning the jest very well, bade him "do the same when he went out, that he might not carry off some of the moveables.” One day over their cups, Philip of Macedon, with a kind of sneer introduced some discourse about the odes* and tra

duced, obliged him to open a school at Corinth, where he exercised that tyranny over children which he could no longer practise over men.—Cic. Tusc. Quest. 1. iii.

Dionysius the elder valued himself upon his poetry, but has been censured as the worst poet in the world. Piloxenus, who was himself an excellent poet, attempted to undeceive him in the favourable opinion he had of his own abilities, but was sent to the quarries for the liberty he took. However, the next day he was restored to favour, and Dionysius repeated

gedies which Dionysius the elder left behind him, and pretended to doubt how he could find leisure for such works. Dionysius answered smartly enough,-"They were written in the time in which you and I, and other happy fellows, spend over their bowl."

Plato did not see Dionysius in Corinth, for he had now been dead some time. But Diogenes of Sinope, when he first met him, addressed him as follows:-"How little dost thou deserve to live!" Thus Dionysius answered:-"It is kind in you to sympathize with me in my misfortunes. "Dost thou think, then," said Diogenes, "that I have any pity for thee, and that I am not rather vexed that such a slave as thou art, and so fit to grow old and die, like thy father, on a tyrant's uneasy throne, should, instead of that, live with us here in mirth and pleasure?" So that when I compare with these words of the philosopher, the doleful expressions of Philistus, in which he bewails the fate of the daughters of Leptines, "That from the great and splendid enjoyments of absolute power, they were reduced to a private and humble station," they appear to one as the lamentations of a woman who regrets her perfumes, her purple robes, and golden trinkets. This account of the sayings of Dionysius seems to me neither foreign from biography, nor without its utility to such readers as are not in a hurry, or taken up with other concerns.

*

If the ill fortune of Dionysius appeared surprising, the success of Timoleon was no less wonderful. For within fifty days after his landing in Sicily, he was master of the citadel of Syracuse, and sent off Dionysius into Peloponnesus. The Corinthians, encouraged with these advantages, sent him a reinforcement of two thousand foot and two hundred horse. These got on their way as far as Thurium; but finding it impracticable to gain a passage from thence, because the sea was beset with a numerous fleet of Carthaginians, they were forced to stop there, and watch their opportunity. However, they employed their time in a very noble undertaking. For the Thurians, marching out of their city to war against the Bru

to him some verses he had taken extraordinary pains with, expecting his approbation; but the poet, instead of giving it, looked round to the guards, and said to them very humorously,-"Take me back to the quarries. Notwithstanding this, Dionysius. disputed the prize of poetry at the Olympic games; but there he was hissed, and the rich pavilion he had sent torn in pieces. He had better success, however, at Athens; for he gained the prize of poetry at the celebrated feast of Bacchus. On this occasion he was in such raptures that he drank to excess, and the debauch threw him into violent pains, to allay which, he asked for a soporative; and his physicians gave him one that laid him asleep, out of which he never awaked. Leptines, mentioned afterwards, was tyrant of Apollonia.

tians left it in charge with these Corinthian strangers, who defended it with as much honour and integrity as if it had been their own.

Meantime, Icetes carried on the siege of the citadel with great vigour, and blocked it up so close, that no provisions could be got in for the Corinthian garrison. He provided also two strangers to assassinate Timoleon, and sent them

privately to Adranum. That general, who never kept any regular guards about him, lived then with the Adranites without any sort of precaution or suspicion, by reason of his confidence in their tutelary god. The assassins being informed that he was going to offer sacrifice, went into the temple with their poniards under their clothes, and mixing with those that stood round the altar, got nearer to him by little and little. They were just going to give each other the signal to begin, when somebody struck one of them on the head with his sword, and laid him at his feet. Neither he that struck the blow kept his station, nor the companion of the dead man; the former, with his sword in his hand, fled to the top of a high rock, and the latter faid hold of the altar, entreating Timoleon to spare his life, on condition that he discovered the whole matter. Accordingly pardon was promised him; and he confessed that he and the person who lay dead were sent on purpose to kill him.

Whilst he was making this confession, the other, man was brought down from the rock, and loudly protested, that he was guilty of no injustice, for he only took righteous vengeance on the wretch who had murdered his father in the city of Leontium.* And for the truth of this he appealed to several that were there present, who all attested the same, and could not but admire the wonderful management of fortune, which, moving one thing by another, bringing together the most distant incidents, and combining those that have no manner of relation, but rather the greatest dissimilarity, make such use of them, that the close of the one process is always the beginning of another. The Corinthians rewarded the man with a present of ten minæ, because his hand had co-operated with the guardian genius of Timoleon, and he had reserved the satisfaction for his private wrongs to the time when fortune availed herself of it to save the general. This happy escape had effects beyond the present; for it inspired the Corinthians with high expectations of Timoleon, when they saw the Sicilians now reverence and guard him, as a man whose

*

History can hardly afford a stronger instance of an interfering Provi dence.

person was sacred, and who was come, as minister of the gods, to avenge and deliver them.

When Icetes had failed in this attempt, and saw many of the Sicilians going over to Timoleon, he blamed himself for making use of the Carthaginians in small numbers only, and availing himself of their assistance as it were by stealth, and as if he were ashamed of it, when they had such immense forces at hand. He sent, therefore, for Mago, their commander-in-chief, and his whole fleet; who, with terrible pomp, took possession of the harbour with a hundred and fifty ships, and landed an army of sixty thousand men, which encamped in the city of Syracuse; insomuch, that every one imagined the inundation of barbarians, which had been announced and expected of old, was now come upon Sicily; for in the many wars which they had waged in that island, the Carthaginians had never before been able to take Syracuse; but Icetes then receiving them, and delivering up the city to them, the whole became a camp of barbarians.

The Corinthians, who still held the citadel, found themselves in very dangerous and difficult circumstances; for besides that they were in want of provisions, because the port was guarded and blocked up, they were employed in sharp and continual disputes about the walls, which were attacked with all manner of machines and batteries, and for the defence of which they were obliged to divide themselves. Timoleon, however, found means to relieve them, by sending a supply of corn from Catana in small fishing boats and little skiffs, which watched the opportunity to make their way through the enemy's fleet, when it happened to be separated by a storm. Mago and Icetes no sooner saw this, than they resolved to make themselves masters of Catana, from which provisions were sent to the besieged; and taking with them the best of their troops, they sailed from Syracuse. Leo the Corinthian, who commanded in the citadel, having observed from the top of it, that those of the enemy who staid behind abated their vigilance, and kept but an indifferent guard, suddenly fell upon them as they were dispersed; and killing some, and putting the rest to flight, gained the quarter called Achradina, which was much the strongest, and had suffered the least from the enemy; for Syracuse is an assemblage, as it were, of towns.* Finding plenty of provisions, and money there, he did not give up the acquisition, nor return into the citadel, but stood upon his de

• There were four; the Isle, or the citadel, which was between the two ports; Achradina, at a little distance from the citadel; Tyche, so called from the temple of Fortune; and Neapolis, or the new city. To these some eminent authors (and Plutarch is of the number) add a fifth, which they call Epipola.