Timoleon

Plutarch

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

Hicetas, then, and his young son, were punished as tyrants and traitors and put to death, and Euthymus, though a brave man in action and of surpassing boldness, found no pity because of a certain insult to the Corinthians which was alleged against him.

It is said, namely, that when the Corinthians had taken the field against them, Euthymus told the men of Leontini in a public harangue that it was nothing fearful or dreadful if

  1. Corinthian women came forth from their homes.
[*](An adaptation of Euripides, Medeia, 215 (Kirchhoff), where Medea speaks to the chorus in the first person.)

So natural is it for most men to be more galled by bitter words than hostile acts; since insolence is harder for them to bear than injury. Besides, defensive acts are tolerated in an enemy as a necessary right, but insults are thought to spring from an excess of hatred or baseness.

After Timoleon had returned, the Syracusans brought the wives and daughters of Hicetas and his friends to public trial, and then put them to death.

And this would seem to have been the most displeasing thing in Timoleon’s career; for if he had opposed it, the women would not have been thus put to death.

But apparently he neglected them and abandoned them to the wrath of the citizens, who were bent on taking vengeance in behalf of Dion, who drove out Dionysius.