Timoleon

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;

so, if we compare the generalship of Epaminondas and Agesilaüs, which in both cases was full of toil and bitter struggles, with that of Timoleon, which was exercised with much ease as well as glory, it appears to men of just and careful reasoning a product, not of fortune, but of fortunate valour.

And yet all his successes were ascribed by him to fortune; for in his letters to his friends at home and in his public addresses to the Syracusans he often said he was thankful to God, who, desiring to save Sicily, gave him the name and title of its saviour.

Moreover, in his house he built a shrine for sacrifice to Automatia, or Chance, and the house itself he consecrated to man’s sacred genius.

And the house in which he dwelt was picked out for him by the Syracusans as a prize for his achievements in the field; they also gave him the pleasantest and most beautiful of their country estates, and at this he used to spend the greater part of his leisure time, after he had sent home for his wife and children.

For he did not return to Corinth, nor did he take part in the disturbances of Greece or expose himself to the jealousy of his fellow citizens, the rock on which most generals, in their insatiable greed for honours and power, make shipwreck;