Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata

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.)

To the man who inquired if he were at leisure he said, I hope that may never happen to me ! [*](Cf. Moralia, 792 C.)

Hearing that two young men at a drinking party had said much that was slanderous about him and his rule, he invited them both to dinner. And when he saw that the one drank much and talked freely, and the other indulged in drink sparingly and with great circumspection, he let the former go free, holding him to be by nature a hard drinker and a slanderous talker when in his cups, but the latter he caused to be put to death, holding that this man was disaffected and hostile as the result of deliberate choice.