Dion

Dionysius, therefore, was destined to learn of the war in Sicily late and from other sources; but meanwhile, as Dion proceeded on his march, he was joined by the Camarinaeans, and no small multitude of the rural Syracusans revolted and swelled his ranks.

Moreover, the Leontines and Campanians who were guarding Epipolae[*](The plateau west of the city of Syracuse. See the note on Nicias, xvii. 1. ) with Timocrates, in consequence of a false report which Dion sent to them that he would attack their cities first, deserted Timocrates and went off to assist their own peoples.

When news of this was brought to Dion as he lay encamped near Acrae, he roused up his soldiers while it was still night and came to the river Anapus, which is ten furlongs distant from the city.

There he halted and sacrificed by the river, addressing his prayers to the rising sun, and on the instant the soothsayers declared that the gods promised him victory. When, too, the audience beheld Dion with a wreath on his head for the sacrifice, with one impulse they all crowned themselves with wreaths.

No fewer than five thousand men had joined him on the march, and though they were wretchedly armed with such weapons as came to hand, their enthusiasm made up for their lack of equipment, so that when Dion gave the word they advanced on the run, exhorting one another with joyful shouts to win their liberty.

As for the Syracusans in the city, the men of note and cultivation, in fresh apparel, went to meet them at the gates, while the multitude set upon the tyrant’s friends and seized those called tale-bearers, wicked men whom the gods hated, who went up and down in the city busily mingling with the Syracusans and reporting to the tyrant the sentiments and utterances of every one.

These, then, were the first to suffer retribution, being beaten to death by those who came upon them; but Timocrates, unable to join the garrison of the acropolis, took horse and dashed out of the city, and as he fled, filled everything with fear and confusion, exaggerating the strength of Dion, that he might not be thought to have abandoned the city through fear of any trivial danger.

Meanwhile Dion drew near the city and was presently seen, leading the way himself in brilliant armour, with his brother Megacles on one side of him, and on the other, Callippus the Athenian, both crowned with garlands.

A hundred of his mercenaries followed Dion as a body-guard, and his officers led the rest in good order, the Syracusans looking on and welcoming as it were a sacred religious procession for the return of liberty and democracy into the city, after an absence of forty-eight years.

After Dion had entered the city by the Temenitid gate, he stopped the noise of the people by a blast of the trumpet, and made proclamation that Dion and Megacles, who were come to overthrow the tyranny, declared the Syracusans and the rest of the Sicilians free from the tyrant.