Dion

at once, then, they ran after them, and found no one, but saw a razor lying under a hollow rock in the quarter from which Sosis had been seen to come.

Well, then, the case of Sosis was already desperate; but when, in addition to these proofs, his servants testified that while it was still night he had left the house alone and carrying the razor, Dion’s accusers withdrew, and the people, after condemning Sosis to death, were reconciled with Dion.

However, they were none the less suspicious of his mercenaries, and especially so, now that most of the struggles against the tyrant were carried on at sea, since Philistus had come from Iapygia with a large number of triremes to help Dionysius; and since the mercenaries were men-at-arms, they thought them of no further use for the war, nay, they felt that even these troops were dependent for protection upon the citizens themselves, who were seamen, and derived their power from their fleet.

And they were still more elated by a successful engagement at sea, in which they defeated Philistus, and then treated him in a barbarous and savage fashion.

Ephorus, it is true, says that when his ship was captured, Philistus slew himself; but Timonides, who was engaged with Dion ill all the events of this war from the very first, in writing to Speusippus the philosopher, relates that Philistus was taken alive after his trireme had run aground,

and that the Syracusans, to begin with, stripped off his breast-plate and exposed his body, naked, to insult and abuse, although he was now an old man; then, that they cut off his head, and gave his body to the boys of the city, with orders to drag it through Achradina and throw it into the stone quarries.