Timoleon

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. VI. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1918.

The men who had thus been sent learned, as chance would have it, that he was about to offer a sacrifice, and therefore came into the sacred precinct with daggers under their robes, mingled with those who stood around the altar, and gradually drew nearer their intended victim.

And as they were just on the point of exhorting one another to begin their work, somebody smote one of them on the head with a sword and laid him low, whereupon neither he who had struck the blow nor the companion of him who had received it kept his place; but the one, with his sword still in his hand, fled to a lofty rock and sprang upon it, while the other laid hold of the altar and begged immunity from Timoleon on the condition of his revealing everything.

And when he had obtained his request, he testified against himself and against his dead comrade that they had been sent to kill Timoleon.

Meanwhile others brought down the man who had fled to the rock, who kept crying out that he had done no wrong, but had justly slain the man on behalf of his dead father, who had been murdered by him some time ago in Leontini.