Timoleon

So he was brought to Syracuse, and when he came before the people, attempted to rehearse a speech composed by him a long time before; but being received with noise and clamour, and seeing that the assembly was inexorable, he flung away his mantle, ran right across the theatre, and dashed head foremost against one of the stone steps, hoping to kill himself.

However, he was not so fortunate as to die in this way, but was taken away, still living, and crucified like a robber.

In this manner, then, did Timoleon extirpate the tyrannies and put a stop to their wars. He found the whole island reduced to a savage state by its troubles and hated by its inhabitants, but he made it so civilized and so desirable in the eyes of all men that others came by sea to dwell in the places from which their own citizens used to run away before.

Agrigentum and Gela, for instance, great cities which had been ruined and depopulated by the Carthaginians after the Attic war, were repeopled at this time, one by Megellus and Pheristus from Velia, the other by Gorgus, who sailed from Ceos and brought with his company the old citizens.

To these settlers Timoleon not only afforded safety and calm after so long a storm of war, but also supplied their further needs and zealously assisted them, so that he was revered by them as a founder.

All the other inhabitants also cherished like feelings towards him, and no conclusion of war, no institution of laws, no settlement of territory, no arrangement of civil polity seemed satisfactory, unless he gave the finishing touches to it, like a master builder adding to a work that is drawing to completion some grace which pleases gods and men.

At any rate, though in his time Greece produced many men who were great and wrought great things, such as Timotheus, Agesilaüs, Pelopidas, and Epaminondas (whom Timoleon most emulated), still, the lustre of their achievements was tarnished by a certain degree of violence and laborious effort, so that some of them were followed by censure and repentance;

whereas in the career of Timoleon, setting aside his necessary treatment of his brother, there is nothing to which it were not meet, as Timaeus says, to apply the words of Sophocles:—

1. Ye Gods, pray tell what Cypris or what winning love.
2. Was partner in this work?

For just as the poetry of Antimachus and the pictures of Dionysius, both Colophonians, for all their strength and vigour, seem forced and laboured, while the paintings of Nicomachus and the verses of Homer not only have power and grace besides, but also give the impression of having been executed readily and easily;