Dion

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 388 sections

45.2.1
But as the day advanced, first, horsemen met him with tidings of the second capture of the city; next, even some of his opponents came with entreaties that he would hasten his march.
45.3.1
Moreover, as the mischief grew worse, Heracleides sent out his brother, and then Theodotes his uncle, begging Dion to help them, since no one now resisted the enemy, he himself was wounded, and the city was almost demolished and consumed by fire.
45.4.1
When these amazing messages reached Dion, he was still sixty furlongs distant from the city gates; but after telling his mercenaries of the city’s peril and exhorting them, he led his army towards the city, no longer in marching step, but on the run, while one messenger after another met him and begged him to hasten.
45.5.1
His mercenaries advancing with astonishing speed and ardour, he burst through the gates into what was called the Hecatompedon,
45.6.1
and at once sent his light-armed troops to charge upon the enemy, in order that the Syracusans might take courage at the sight he also marshalled his men-at-arms in person, together with those of the citizens who kept running up and forming with them, dividing his commands and forming companies in column, that he might make a more formidable attack from many points at once.
46.1.1
When he had made these preparations and had prayed to the gods, and was seen leading his forces through the city against the enemy, shouts of joy and loud battle-cries mingled with prayers and supplications were raised by the Syracusans, who called Dion their saviour and god, and his mercenaries their brethren and fellow citizens.
46.2.1
And no one was so fond of self or fond of life in that emergency as not to show himself more anxious about Dion alone than about all the rest, as he marched at their head to meet the danger, through blood and fire and the mass of dead bodies lying in the streets.
46.3.1
It was true, indeed, that the enemy presented a formidable appearance, for they had become altogether savage, and had drawn themselves up along the demolished siege-wall, which made the approach to them difficult and hard to force; but the peril from the fire disturbed the mercenaries of Dion more, and made their progress arduous.
46.4.1
For they were surrounded on all sides by glowing flames which were spreading among the houses; they trod upon blazing ruins and ran at the risk of their lives under falling fragments of great size; they made their way through clouds of dust and smoke; and yet they tried to keep together and not break their ranks.
46.5.1
Moreover, when they joined battle with the enemy, only a few on each side could fight at close quarters, so narrow and uneven was the place; but the Syracusans encouraged them with eager shouts, and Nypsius and his men were overpowered.
46.6.1
Most of them fled back into the acropolis, which was near, and so saved themselves; but those who were left outside and scattered hither and thither, were pursued and slain by the mercenaries.
46.7.1
No immediate enjoyment of their victory, however, and none of the glad congratulations befitting so great an achievement were possible for the Syracusans in that emergency; they turned their attention to their burning houses, and only by toiling all night did they succeed in putting out the fire.
47.1.1
When it was day, not one of the other popular leaders would remain in the city, but passed judgement on themselves by taking to flight; Heracleides and Theodotes, however, came of their own accord and surrendered themselves to Dion, acknowledging that they had done wrong, and begging him to treat them better than they had treated him;
47.2.1
it was meet, they said, that Dion, who was their superior in every other virtue, should also show himself a better master of his anger than his ungrateful foes, who were now come confessing that in the very quality to which they had formerly disputed his claim, namely, virtue, they were his inferiors.
47.3.1
Though Heracleides and Theodotes thus besought Dion, his friends exhorted him not to spare such base and envious men, but to give Heracleides over to the mercy of his soldiers, and to rid the commonwealth of the hunt for mob-favour, which, no less than tyranny, was a raging distemper.
47.4.1
But Dion tried to soften their resentment, saying that while other generals trained themselves mostly for arms and war, he himself had studied for a long time in the Academy how to conquer anger, envy, and all contentiousness;
47.5.1
and it was no manifestation of such self-mastery, he said, when one was kind to friends and benefactors, but when one who had been wronged was merciful and mild towards the erring;
47.6.1
besides, he wished men to see that he was superior to Heracleides, not so much in power and wisdom, as in goodness and justice; for therein lay real superiority;
47.7.1
whereas successes in war, even though they had to be shared with no man, must at least be shared with fortune.
47.8.1
Moreover, if envy led Heracleides to be faithless and base, surely anger must not drive Dion to sully his virtue; for although taking vengeance for a wrong was in the eyes of the law more just than the doing of the wrong unprovoked, by nature it sprang from one and the same weakness.
47.9.1
Furthermore, baseness in a man, even though it be a grievous thing, was not so altogether savage and obstinate that it could not be conquered by frequent benefactions and altered by a sense of gratitude.
48.1.1
After using such arguments as these, Dion set Heracleides and Theodotes free.
48.2.1
Then turning his attention to the siege-wall, he bade each one of the Syracusans to cut a stake and lay it down near the works, and setting his mercenaries to the task all night, while the Syracusans were resting, he succeeded in fencing off the acropolis, so that when day came the citizens and the enemy alike were amazed to see with what speed the work had been accomplished.
48.3.1
He also buried the dead Syracusans, ransomed those who had been taken prisoners, although they were fully two thousand in number, and then held an assembly.
48.4.1
Here Heracleides came forward with a motion that Dion should be chosen general with absolute powers by land and sea.
48.5.1
The aristocracy approved of this motion and urged the appointment; but the mob of sailors and day-labourers tumultuously opposed it, being vexed that Heracleides should lose his office of admiral, and considering him, even though good for nothing in other ways, at least altogether more a man of the people than Dion and more under the control of the multitude.
48.6.1
This point Dion yielded to them, and restored the command by sea to Heracleides; but when they insisted upon the redistribution of land and houses, he opposed them and repealed their former decrees on this head, thereby winning their displeasure.
48.7.1
Wherefore Heracleides at once renewed his machinations, and, when he was stationed at Messana, artfully tried to exasperate against Dion the soldiers and sailors who had sailed thither with him, declaring that Dion intended to make himself tyrant; but he himself was all the while making secret compacts with Dionysius through the agency of Pharax the Spartan.
48.8.1
When this was suspected by the better class of Syracusans, there was dissension in the army, and therefore perplexity and want of provisions in Syracuse,
48.9.1
so that Dion was altogether at a loss what to do, and was blamed by his friends for having strengthened against himself a man so perverse and so corrupted by envy and baseness as Heracleides was.
49.1.1
Now, Pharax was encamped at Neapolis, in the territory of Agrigentum, and thither Dion led forth the Syracusans. Dion wished to settle the issue between them at a later opportunity, but Heracleides and his sailors kept crying out against him, saying that his wish was not to decide the war by a battle, but to have it last forever, that he might remain in power.
49.2.1
He was therefore forced into an engagement, and was worsted. Since, however, the defeat of his men was not severe, but due more to their own seditious disorders than to the enemy, Dion again prepared for battle and drew up his forces, persuading and encouraging them.
49.3.1
But in the evening word was brought to him that Heracleides with his fleet was sailing for Syracuse, determined to occupy the city and shut Dion and his army out of it.
49.4.1
Immediately, therefore, he took with him his most influential and zealous supporters and rode all night, and about nine o’clock next day was at the gates of the city, having covered seven hundred furlongs.
49.5.1
But Heracleides, who, in spite of all his efforts, arrived too late with his ships, put out to sea again, and being without definite plans, fell in with Gaesylus the Spartan, who insisted that he was sailing from Sparta to take command of the Sicilians, as Gylippus had formerly done.
49.6.1
Heracleides, accordingly, gladly took up this man, attached him to himself like an amulet, as it were against the influence of Dion, and showed him to his confederates; then, secretly sending a herald to Syracuse, he ordered the citizens to receive their Spartan commander.
49.7.1
Dion, however, made answer that the Syracusans had commanders enough, and that if their situation absolutely required a Spartan also, he himself was the man, since he had been made a citizen of Sparta. Thereupon Gaesylus gave up his pretensions to the command, and sailing to Dion, effected a reconciliation between him and Heracleides, who took oaths and made the most solemn pledges, in support of which Gaesylus himself swore that he would avenge Dion and punish Heracleides if he worked any more mischief.
50.1.1
After this the Syracusans discharged their fleet, since it was of no use, while it involved great outlays for the crews, and caused dissension among their commanders; they also laid siege to the citadel after they had finished building the wall that enclosed it.
50.2.1
No one came to the help of the besieged, provisions failed them, and the mercenaries became mutinous, so that the son of Dionysius gave up his cause for lost and made terms with Dion. The citadel he handed over to him together with the arms and other equipment there, while he himself, taking his mother and sisters and manning five triremes, sailed away to his father.
50.3.1
Dion allowed him to depart in safety, and no one who was then in Syracuse missed that sight, nay, they called upon the absent ones also, pitying them because they could not behold this day and the rising of the sun upon a free Syracuse.
50.4.1
For since, among the illustrations men give of the mutations of fortune, the expulsion of Dionysius is still to this day the strongest and plainest, what joy must we suppose those men themselves then felt, and how great a pride, who, with the fewest resources, over-threw the greatest tyranny that ever was!
51.1.1
After Apollocrates had sailed away, and when Dion was on his way to the acropolis, the women could not restrain themselves nor await his entrance, but ran out to the gates, Aristomache leading Dion’s son, while Arete followed after them in tears, and at a loss how to greet and address her husband now that she had lived with another man.
51.2.1
After Dion had greeted his sister first, and then his little son, Aristomache led Arete to him, and said: We were unhappy, Dion, while thou wast in exile;
51.3.1
but now that thou art come and art victorious, thou hast taken away our sorrow from all of us, except from this woman alone, whom I was so unfortunate as to see forced to wed another while thou wast still alive.
51.4.1
Since, then, fortune has made thee our lord and master, how wilt thou judge of the compulsion laid upon her? Is it as her uncle or as her husband that she is to greet thee?
51.5.1
So spake Aristomache, and Dion, bursting into tears, embraced his wife fondly, gave her his son, and bade her go to his own house and there he himself also dwelt, after he had put the citadel in charge of the Syracusans.
52.1.1
And now that his enterprise had been so successful, he thought it not right to enjoy his present good fortune before distributing thanks to his friends, rewards to his allies, and particularly to his Athenian associates and to his mercenaries some mark of kindness and honour, his generosity leading him beyond his resources.
52.2.1
But as for himself, he lived with simplicity and moderation on what he had, and men wondered at him because, while his successes drew upon him the eyes not only of Sicily and Carthage, but also of all Hellas, and while he was regarded by the people of that time as the greatest of living men, and was thought to be blessed with courage and good fortune beyond any other commander,
52.3.1
he was nevertheless so modest in his dress, his attendance, and his table, just as though he were messing with Plato in the Academy, and not living among captains of mercenaries and paid soldiers, who find in their daily feastings, and other enjoyments, a solace for their toils and perils.
52.4.1
Plato, indeed, wrote to him that the eyes of all the world were now fixed upon him alone, but Dion himself, as it would seem, kept his eyes fixed upon one spot in one city, namely, the Academy, and considered that his spectators and judges there admired neither great exploits nor boldness nor victories, but watched to see only whether he made a discreet and decorous use of his good fortune, and showed himself modest in his high estate.
52.5.1
Nevertheless, he made it a point not to remit or relax at all the gravity of his manners or his haughtiness in dealing with the people, although his situation called for a gracious demeanour, and although Plato, as I have said, wrote and warned him that self-will was a companion of solitude.
52.6.1
But he seems to have been of a temper naturally averse to graciousness, and, besides, he was ambitious to curb the Syracusans, who were given to excessive license and luxury.
53.1.1
For Heracleides once more set himself in opposition to him. To begin with, when he was invited by Dion to attend the council, he refused to come, saying that as a man in private station he would meet in assembly with the other citizens.
53.2.1
Next, he publicly denounced Dion for not demolishing the citadel, and for checking the people when they set out to open the tomb of Dionysius and cast out his dead body, and for sending to Corinth for counsellors and colleagues in the government, thereby showing contempt for his fellow citizens.
53.3.1
And in fact Dion did send for assistance to the Corinthians, hoping the more easily to establish the civil polity which he had in mind if they were at his side.
53.4.1
And he had it in mind to put a curb upon unmixed democracy in Syracuse, regarding it as not a civil polity, but rather, in the words of Plato, a bazaar of polities; also to establish and set in order a mixture of democracy and royalty, somewhat after the Spartan and Cretan fashion, wherein an aristocracy should preside, and administer the most important affairs; for he saw that the Corinthians had a polity which leaned towards oligarchy, and that they transacted little public business in their assembly of the people.
53.5.1
Accordingly, since he expected that these measures would find their chief opponent in Heracleides, and since the man was in every way turbulent, fickle, and seditious, he now yielded to those who had long wished to kill him, but whom he had hitherto restrained; so they made their way into the house of Heracleides and slew him.
53.6.1
His death was keenly resented by the Syracusans; but nevertheless, when Dion gave him a splendid funeral, followed the body to its grave with his army, and then discoursed to them upon the matter, they came to see that it was impossible for the city to be free from tumults while Heracleides and Dion together conducted its affairs.
54.1.1
Now, there was a certain comrade of Dion’s named Callippus, an Athenian, who, as Plato says, had become intimately acquainted with him, not as a fellow pupil in philosophy, but in consequence of initiation into the mysteries and the recurrent comradeship which this brought. He took part in Dion’s expedition and was held in honour by him, so that he even entered Syracuse with him at the head of all his comrades, with a garland on his head, after winning glorious distinction in battle.
54.2.1
But now that the chief and noblest friends of Dion had been consumed away by the war, and Heracleides was dead, he saw that the people of Syracuse were without a leader, and that he himself was very much in favour with Dion’s soldiers.
54.3.1
Therefore, showing himself the vilest of men, and altogether expecting that he would have Sicily as a reward for murdering his friend, and, as some say, having received twenty talents from the enemy to pay him for doing the murder, he bribed some of Dion’s mercenaries into a conspiracy against him, beginning his work in a most malicious and rascally manner.
54.4.1
For he was always reporting to Dion various speeches of his soldiers against him, either actually uttered or fabricated by himself, and in this way won his confidence, and was authorized to meet secretly with whom he would and talk freely with them against Dion, in order that no lurking malcontents might remain undiscovered.
54.5.1
By this means Callippus succeeded in quickly discovering and banding together the evil-minded and discontented citizens, and, whenever any one who had repulsed his overtures told Dion about them, Dion was not disturbed nor vexed, but assumed that Callippus was merely carrying out his injunctions.
55.1.1
As the plot was ripening, Dion saw an apparition of great size and portentous aspect. He was sitting late in the day in the vestibule of his house, alone and lost in thought,
55.2.1
when suddenly a noise was heard at the other end of the colonnade, and turning his gaze in that direction he saw (for it was not yet dark) a woman of lofty stature, in garb and countenance exactly like a tragic Fury, sweeping the house with a sort of broom.
55.3.1
He was terribly shocked, and, becoming apprehensive, summoned his friends, told them what he had seen, and begged them to remain and spend the night with him, being altogether beside himself, and fearing that if he were left alone the portent would appear to him again.
55.4.1
This, indeed, did not occur a second time. But a few days afterwards his son, who was hardly a boy any more, in a fit of angry displeasure caused by some trivial and childish grievance, threw himself headlong from the roof and was killed.
56.1.1
While Dion was thus heavily afflicted, Callippus was all the more intent upon his plot, and spread a report among the Syracusans that Dion, being now childless, had made up his mind to send for Apollocrates, the son of Dionysius, and make him his successor, since he was his wife’s nephew and his sister’s grandson.
56.2.1
And presently both Dion and his wife and sister began to suspect what was going on, and information of the plot came to them from every quarter.
56.3.1
But Dion, as it would seem, being in distress at the fate of Heracleides, and suffering continual vexation and depression at thought of the man’s murder, which he regarded as a stain upon his life and actions, declared that he was ready now to die many deaths and to suffer any one who wished to slay him, if it was going to be necessary for him to live on his guard, not only against his enemies, but also against his friends.
56.4.1
But Callippus, seeing that the women were investigating the matter carefully, and taking alarm, came to them with denials and in tears and offering to give them whatever pledge of fidelity they desired. So they required him to swear the great oath.
56.5.1
This was done in the following manner. The one who gives this pledge goes down into the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone, where, after certain sacred rites have been performed, he puts on the purple vestment of the goddess, takes a blazing torch in his hand, and recites the oath.
56.6.1
All this Callippus did, and recited the oath; but he made such a mockery of the rods as to wait for the festival of the goddess by whom he had sworn, the Coreia, and then to do the murder. And yet it is possible that he took no account of the day, since he knew that the goddess would have been utterly outraged even if at another time her mystic were slain by his mystagogue.
57.1.1
Many had conspired to do the deed, and as Dion was sitting with his friends in an apartment containing couches for entertainment, some of the conspirators invested the house outside, while others stood at the doors and windows of the apartment.
57.2.1
The actual assassins, who were Zacynthians, came in unarmed and without their cloaks. Then at the same time those outside closed the doors and held them fast, while those inside fell upon Dion and tried to strangle and crush him.
57.3.1
They made no headway, however, and called for a sword; but no one ventured to open the door. For Dion’s companions inside were many in number; but each of them thought that by abandoning Dion to his fate he would save his own life, and so no one ventured to help him.
57.4.1
After some delay, Lycon the Syracusan handed through the window to one of the Zacynthians a shortsword, and with this they cut Dion’s throat as if he had been a victim at the altar; he had long since been overpowered and was quivering before the stroke.
57.5.1
At once, too, they cast his sister into prison, together with his wife, who was big with child. His wife had a most wretched confinement, and gave birth in the prison to a male child, which the women ventured to rear, with the consent of their guards, and all the more because Callippus was already involved in great trouble.
58.1.1
At the outset, indeed, after he had killed Dion, Callippus was a glorious personage, and had Syracuse in his power. He actually wrote letter to the city of Athens, which, next to the gods, he ought to have held in awe and fear after setting his hands to so great a pollution.
58.2.1
But it appears to be truly said of that city that the good men whom she breeds are of the highest excellence, and the bad men of the most despicable baseness, just as her soil produces sweetest honey and deadliest hemlock.
58.3.1
However, Callippus did not long remain a scandal to fortune and the gods, as though they had no eyes for a man who won leadership and power by so great impiety, but speedily paid a fitting penalty.
58.4.1
For on setting out to take Catana, he at once lost Syracuse; at which time, as they say, he remarked that he had lost a city and got a cheese-grater.
58.5.1
Then he attacked Messana and lost most of his soldiers, among whom were the murderers of Dion; and since no city in Sicily would receive him, but all hated and spurned him, he took possession of Rhegium.
58.6.1
But there, being in straitened circumstances and unable to support his mercenaries properly, he was put to death by Leptines and Polyperchon, who, as fortune would have it, used the shortsword with which Dion also was said to have been smitten.
58.7.1
And it was known by its size, which was short, after the Spartan fashion, and by the style of its workmanship, being delicately and cunningly wrought. Such, then, was the penalty which Callippus paid.
58.8.1
As for Andromache and Arete, when they were released from prison, they were taken up by Hicetas the Syracusan, who had been one of Dion’s friends, and who was thought to be faithfully and honourably disposed towards them.
58.9.1
Afterwards, having been persuaded by the enemies of Dion, he got a ship ready for them, pretending that they were to be sent into Peloponnesus, and ordered the sailors, during the voyage, to cut their throats and cast them into the sea. Others, however, say that they were thrown overboard alive, and the little boy with them.
58.10.1
But Hicetas also met with a punishment worthy of his crimes. For he himself was captured by Timoleon and put to death, and the Syracusans, to avenge Dion, slew his two daughters also; of which things I have written at length in my Life of Timoleon.

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