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For as in the poetry of Antimachus, and the paintings of Dionysius, the
Kolophonians, we find a certain vigour and power, yet think them forced
in expression, and produced with much labour, while the paintings of
Nikomachus and the verses of Homer, besides their other graces and
merits, have the charm of seeming to have been composed easily and
without effort, so also the campaigns of Timoleon, when compared with
the laborious and hardly contested ones of Epameinondas or Agesilaus,
seem to have, besides their glory, a wonderful ease, which property is
not so much to be attributed to good luck as to prosperous valour. He,
however, ascribed all his successes to Fortune, for in writing to his
friends at home, and in his public speeches to the Syracusans, he
frequently expressed his thankfulness to this goddess, who, having
determined to save Sicily, had chosen to ascribe to him the credit of
doing it. In his house he built a chapel to Automatia,--the goddess
under whose auspices blessings and glory came as it were of themselves.
To her he offered sacrifices, and consecrated his house to her. He lived
in a house which the Syracusans had bestowed upon him as a special prize
for his successes as general, and also the most beautiful and pleasant
country seat, where indeed he spent most of his leisure time with his
wife and children, whom he had sent for from Corinth. For he never
returned to Corinth, nor mixed himself up in the troubles of Greece, nor
did he expose himself to the hatred of political faction, which is the
rock upon which great generals commonly split, in their insatiate thirst
for honour and power; but he remained in Sicily, enjoying the blessings
of which he was the author; the greatest of which was to see so many
cities, and so many tens of thousands, all made happy and prosperous by
his means.
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