Timoleon

the men were alike not only in the good principles which they adopted, but also in the good fortune which they enjoyed in their conduct of affairs,

and they will make it hard for my readers to decide whether the greatest of their successful achievements were due to their good fortune or their wisdom.[*](In the MSS. this Introduction stands as the first chapter of the Aemilius Paulus.)

The state of affairs in Syracuse, before the expedition of Timoleon into Sicily, was as follows.

After Dion had driven out Dionysius the tyrant, he was at once treacherously slain,[*](See the Dion, chapter lvii. This was in 354 B.C.) and those who had helped him to free Syracuse were divided among themselves. The city, therefore, was continually exchanging one tyrant for another, and owing to a multitude of ills was almost abandoned,

while as for the rest of Sicily, part of it was ruined and already wholly without inhabitants by reason of the wars, and most of the cities were occupied by Barbarians of mixed races and soldiers out of employment, who readily consented to the successive changes in the despotic power.

At last Dionysius, in the tenth year of his exile,[*](346 B.C.) collected mercenaries, drove out Nisaeus; who was at that time master of Syracuse, recovered the power again, and established himself as tyrant anew; he had been unaccountably deprived by a small force of the greatest tyranny that ever was, and now more unaccountably still he had become, from a lowly exile, master of those who drove him forth.