Dion

But if Dion and Brutus, men of solid understanding and philosophic training and not easily cast down or overpowered by anything that happened to them, were so affected by a spectre that they actually told others about it, I do not know but we shall be compelled to accept that most extraordinary doctrine of the oldest times, that mean and malignant spirits,

in envy of good men and opposition to their noble deeds, try to confound and terrify them, causing their virtue to rock and totter, in order that they may not continue erect and inviolate in the path of honour and so attain a better portion after death than the spirits themselves.

But this subject must be reserved for discussion elsewhere, and in this, the twelfth book[*](The Pericles was part of the tenth book (chapter ii. 3), the Demosthenes part of the fifth (chapter iii. 1). The ordinary arrangement of the Lives purely arbitrary.) of my Parallel Lives, I shall begin with that of the elder man.

Dionysius the Elder, after assuming the reins of government,[*](In 405 B.C.) at once married the daughter of Hermocrates the Syracusan.