Dion

When it was day, not one of the other popular leaders would remain in the city, but passed judgement on themselves by taking to flight; Heracleides and Theodotes, however, came of their own accord and surrendered themselves to Dion, acknowledging that they had done wrong, and begging him to treat them better than they had treated him;

it was meet, they said, that Dion, who was their superior in every other virtue, should also show himself a better master of his anger than his ungrateful foes, who were now come confessing that in the very quality to which they had formerly disputed his claim, namely, virtue, they were his inferiors.

Though Heracleides and Theodotes thus besought Dion, his friends exhorted him not to spare such base and envious men, but to give Heracleides over to the mercy of his soldiers, and to rid the commonwealth of the hunt for mob-favour, which, no less than tyranny, was a raging distemper.

But Dion tried to soften their resentment, saying that while other generals trained themselves mostly for arms and war, he himself had studied for a long time in the Academy how to conquer anger, envy, and all contentiousness;

and it was no manifestation of such self-mastery, he said, when one was kind to friends and benefactors, but when one who had been wronged was merciful and mild towards the erring;

besides, he wished men to see that he was superior to Heracleides, not so much in power and wisdom, as in goodness and justice; for therein lay real superiority;

whereas successes in war, even though they had to be shared with no man, must at least be shared with fortune.