Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/101

 PLATO AND DIONYSIUS. 75 wards complained, and with good show of reason (when Dion was in exile, menacing attack upon Syracuse, under the favorable sympathies of Plato), that the great philosopher had actually de- terred him (Dionyisus) from executing the same capital improve- ments which he was now encouraging Dion to accomplish by an armed invasion. Plato was keenly sensitive to this reproach af- terwards ; but even his own exculpation proves it to have been in the main not undeserved. Plutarch observes that Plato felt a proud consciousness of phi- losophical dignity in disdaining respect to persons, and in refus ing to the defects of Dionysius any greater measure of indul- gence than he would have shown to an ordinary pupil of the Academy. 1 If we allow him credit for a sentiment in itself hon- orable, it can only be at the expense of his fitness for dealing with practical life ; by admitting (to quote a remarkable phrase from one of his own dialogues) that " he tried to deal with indi- vidual men without knowing those rules of art or practice which bear on human affairs. 3 " Dionysius was not a common pupil, nor could Plato reasonably expect the like unmeasured docility from one for whose ear so many hostile influences were competing. Nor were Plato and Dionysius the only parties concerned. There was, besides, in the first place, Dion, whose whole position was at stake next, and of yet greater moment, the relief of the people of Syracuse and Sicily. For them, and on their be- half, Dion had been laboring with such zeal, that he had inspired (5 ev& i ' v r a fie KeAei>ef IT o telv TT uv T a rav r a, rj pi) iroteiv. b]>r/i> kyu KuTiTicara fivrjfiovevcal as. Cornelius Ncpos (Dion, c. 3) gives to Plato the credit, which belongs altogether to Dion, of having inspired Dionysius with these ideas. ' Plutarch, De Adulator, ct Amici Discrimine, p. 52 E. We may set sigainst this, however, a passage in one of the other treatises of Plutarch (Philosophand. cum Principibus, p. 779 ad jinem), in which he observes, that Plato, coming to Sicily with the hope of converting his political doctrines into laws through the agency of Dionysius, found the latter already corrupted by power, unsusceptible of cure, and deaf to admoni- tion. 8 Plato, Phaedon, c. 88. p. 89 D. OLKOVV alaxpbv ; nai 6f/hov, OTI uvet Tivr}^ Tjjf Trepl Tuv&puneia 6 TOLOVTOQ xprjadai Eirixeipsl rolf uv3punot; He is expounding the causes and growth of misanthropic dispositions one of the most striking passages in his dialogues.