Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata

At another time he went into his son’s house, and, observing a vast number of gold and silver drinking-cups, he exclaimed, There is no despot in you, for with all the drinking-cups which you are always getting from me you have not made for yourself a single friend.

He levied money on the Syracusans, and later, when he saw them lamenting and begging and protesting that they had none, he ordered a second levy, and this he did twice or thrice. [*](Cf. Aristotle, Politics, v. ii., and the Aristotelian Oeconomica, ii. 20, and Polyaenus, Strategemata, v. 19.) But when, after calling for still more, he heard that they laughed and jeered as they went about in the market-place, he

When his mother, who was well on in years, wanted to get married, he said that he had the power to violate the laws of the State, but not the laws of Nature. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Solon, chap. xx. (89 D).)

While he punished relentlessly all other malefactors, he was very lenient with the footpads, so that the Syracusans should stop their dining and drinking together.

A stranger professed that he would tell him privately and instruct him how to know beforehand those who were plotting against him, and Dionysus bade him speak; whereupon the stranger came close to him and said, Hand me a talent that you may give the impression that you have heard about the plotters’ secret signs; and Dionysius gave it, pretending that he had heard, and marvelling at the man’s clever tactics. [*](Cf. Polyaenus, v. 2. 3, and Stobaeus, Florilegium, iii. 65.)