Timoleon

For cities at once sent envoys to Timoleon and espoused his cause, and particularly Mamercus, the tyrant of Catana, a warlike and wealthy man, presented himself as an ally.

And what was most important, Dionysius himself, now grown desperate and almost forced to surrender, despised Hicetas for his shameful defeat, and in admiration of Timoleon sent to him and his Corinthians offering to surrender himself and the citadel to them. Timoleon accepted this unexpected good fortune,

and sent Eucleides and Telemachus, men of Corinth, into the acropolis, and with them four hundred soldiers, not all at once, nor openly, for this was impossible when an enemy was blockading the harbour; but they made their way in secretly and in small companies.

These soldiers, then, took over the acropolis and the castle of the tyrant, together with his equipment and stores for the war;

for there were many horses there, all sorts of engines of war, and a great quantity of missiles, and armour for seventy thousand men had been stored up there for a long time.

Dionysius also had with him two thousand soldiers; these, as well as the supplies, he turned over to Timoleon, while he himself, with his treasure and a few of his friends, sailed off without the knowledge of Hicetas.

And after he had been conveyed to the camp of Timoleon, where for the first time he was seen as a private person and in humble garb, he was sent off to Corinth with a single ship and a small treasure,

having been born and reared in a tyranny which was the greatest and most illustrious of all tyrannies and having held this for ten years, and then for twelve other years, after the expedition of Dion, having been involved in harassing struggles and wars, and having surpassed in his sufferings all his acts of tyranny.

For he lived to see the violent deaths of his grown-up sons and the violation of his maiden daughters, and the shameful abuse of the person of his wife, who was at the same time his sister, and who, while living, was subjected to the most wanton pleasures of his enemies, and after being murdered, together with her children, was cast into the sea. These things, then, have been fully described in my Life of Dion.[*](There is nothing in the Dion to justify this statement. The cruelties described were committed by the revolting people of Locri, to whom Dionysius had made himself odious during his residence there from 356 to 346 B.C. Cf. Athenaeus, p. 541 c-e. )

But as for Dionysius, after his arrival at Corinth there was no Greek who did not long to behold and speak to him.

But those who rejoiced in his misfortunes were lead by their hatred to come together gladly that they might trample, as it were, upon one who had been cast down by Fortune; while those who regarded rather the reversal of his fortune and sympathised with him, saw strong proof, amid the weakness of things that are human and seen, of the power of causes that are unseen and divine.

For that age showed no work either of nature or of art that was comparable to this work of Fortune, namely, the recent tyrant of Sicily in Corinth, whiling his time away at a fishmonger’s or sitting in a perfumer’s shop, drinking diluted wine from the taverns and skirmishing in public with common prostitutes, or trying to teach music-girls in their singing, and earnestly contending with them about songs for the stage and melody in hymns.