Dion

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.[*](Apparently the meaning in Sicilian Greek, of the word Catana. Callippus maintained himself in Syracuse only thirteen months.)