Timoleon

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;