"
Plato never saw Dionysius at Corinth, for he was dead at that time; but
Diogenes of Sinope, when he first met him, said, "How unworthily you
live, Dionysius." Dionysius answered him, "Thank you, Diogenes, for
sympathising with my misfortunes." "Why," said Diogenes; "do you suppose
that I sympathise with you, and am not rather grieved that a slave like
you, a man fit, like your father, to grow old and die on a miserable
throne, should be living in luxury and enjoyment amongst us?" So, when I
compare with these sayings of his the lamentations which Philistius
pours forth over the daughters of Leptines, that they had fallen from
the glories of sovereign power into a humble station, they seem to me
like the complainings of a woman who has lost her perfumes, her purple
dresses, or her jewels.
These details, I think, for readers who are at leisure, are not foreign
to the design of biography, and not without value.
XVI. If the fall of Dionysius seems strange, the good fortune of
Timoleon was no less wonderful. Within fifty days of his landing in
Sicily, he was master of the citadel of Syracuse, and sent back
Dionysius to Peloponnesus. Encouraged by his success, the Corinthians
sent him a reinforcement of two thousand hoplites and two hundred horse.
These men reached Thurii, but there found it impossible to cross over
into Sicily, as the Carthaginians held the sea with a great fleet.
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