Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/465

 VOTE OF A GUARD. 443 s: 3, around nis own tent, ordered fires to be kindled, summoned on a sudden his most intimate friends, and affected to retire under their escort to the citadel. On the morrow an assembly was convened, of the Syracusans and residents present, purporting to be a Syracusan assembly; Syracuse in military guise, or as it were in Comitia Centuriata, to employ an ancient phrase belonging to the Roman republic. Before this assembly Dionysius appeared, and threw himself upon their protection ; affirming that his life had been assailed during the preceding night, calling upon them emphatically to stand by him against the incessant snares of his enemies, and demanding for that pur- pose a permanent body of guards. His appeal, plausibly and pa- thetically turned, and doubtless warmly seconded by zealous par- tisans, met with complete success. The assembly, Syracusan or quasi-Syracusan, though held at Leontini, passed a formal decree, granting to Dionysius a body-guard of six hundred men, selected by himself and responsible to him alone. 1 One speaker indeed proposed to limit the guards to such a number as should be sufficient to protect him against any small number of personal enemies, but not to render him independent of, or formidable to, the many. 2 But such precautionary refinement was not likely to be much considered, when the assembly was dishonest or misguid- ed enough to pass the destructive vote here solicited ; and even if embodied in the words of the resolution, there were no means of securing its observance in practice. The regiment of guards being once formally sanctioned, Dionysius heeded little the limit of number prescribed to him. He immediately enrolled more than one thousand men, selected as well for their bravery as from their poverty and desperate position. He provided them with the choicest arms, and promised to them the most munificent pay. To this basis of a certain, permanent, legalized, regiment < f house- hold troops, he added farther a sort of standing army, composed of mercenaries hardly less at his devotion than the guards prop- erly so called. In addition to the mercenaries already around 1 Diodor. xiii, 95. ovvefiovheve rolg 'Zvpair.ovmois fiitiovai TOGOVTOVQ roi)f (j>v%a.Ka<; i. e. roaav- TTV TT/V la%vv, &G-&' ixdcrov uev Kol vbf nal avuirAetovuv KpeiTru, TOV A) T/TTU, e'vai.
 * Aristotel. Politic, iii, 10, 10. Kat kLovvaiy f, or' IJTEL rovg (pMaKa^