Dion

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. VI. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1918.

After this the Syracusans discharged their fleet, since it was of no use, while it involved great outlays for the crews, and caused dissension among their commanders; they also laid siege to the citadel after they had finished building the wall that enclosed it.

No one came to the help of the besieged, provisions failed them, and the mercenaries became mutinous, so that the son of Dionysius gave up his cause for lost and made terms with Dion. The citadel he handed over to him together with the arms and other equipment there, while he himself, taking his mother and sisters and manning five triremes, sailed away to his father.

Dion allowed him to depart in safety, and no one who was then in Syracuse missed that sight, nay, they called upon the absent ones also, pitying them because they could not behold this day and the rising of the sun upon a free Syracuse.

For since, among the illustrations men give of the mutations of fortune, the expulsion of Dionysius is still to this day the strongest and plainest, what joy must we suppose those men themselves then felt, and how great a pride, who, with the fewest resources, over-threw the greatest tyranny that ever was!