Dion

But Timaeus, finding a fair excuse for his animosity in the zeal and fidelity which Philistus showed in behalf of the tyranny, gluts himself with the slanders against him. Now, those who were wronged by Philistus while he lived may perhaps be pardoned for carrying their resentment to the length of maltreating his unconscious body;

but those who in later times write histories of that period, and who were not harmed by his life, but avail themselves of his writings, owe it to his reputation not to reproach him, in insolent and scurrilous language, for calamities in which fortune may involve even the best of men.

However, Ephorus also is unsound in heaping praises upon Philistus; for, although he is most skilful in furnishing unjust deeds and base natures with specious motives, and in discovering decorous names for them, still, even he, with all his artifice, cannot extricate himself from the charge of having been the greatest lover of tyrants alive, and more than any one else always an emulous admirer of luxury, power, wealth, and marriage alliances of tyrants.

Verily, he who neither praises the conduct of Philistus, nor gloats insultingly over his misfortunes, takes the fittest course.

After the death of Philistus, Dionysius sent to Dion offering to surrender to him the acropolis, his munitions of war, and his mercenaries, with five months’ full pay for these,

and demanding for himself the privilege of retiring unmolested into Italy, and of enjoying during his residence there the revenues of Gyarta, a large and rich tract in the territory of Syracuse, extending from the sea to the interior of the island.

Dion, however, would not accept these terms, but bade him apply to the Syracusans, and these, hoping to take Dionysius alive, drove away his ambassadors.