Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/110

 84 HISTORY OF GREECE. had labored long in vain to reconcile the two exasperated kins- men, and could not now labor for any opposite end. 1 But though Plato was lukewarm, his friends and pupils at the Academy cordially sympathized with Dion. Speusippus espe- cially, the intimate friend and relative, having accompanied Plato to Syracuse, had communicated much with the population in the city, and gave encouraging reports of their readiness to aid Dion, even if he came with ever so small a force against Dionysius. Kallippus, with Eudemus (the friend of Aristotle), Timonides, and Miltas all three members of the society at the Academy, and the last a prophet also lent him aid and embarked in his enter- prise. There were a numerous body of exiles from Syracuse, not less than one thousand altogether ; with most of whom Dion opened communication, inviting their fellowship. He at the same time hired mercenary soldiers in small bands, keeping his mea sures as secret as he could. 2 Alkimenes, one of the leading Achaeans in Peloponnesus, was warm in the cause (probably froir sympathy with the Achaean colony Kroton, then under the depen dence of Dionysius), conferring upon it additional dignity by hi? name and presence. A considerable quantity of spare arms, oi every description, was got together, in order to supply new un- armed partisans on reaching Sicily. With all these aids Dion found himself in the island of Zakynthus, a little after Midsum- mer 357 B. c. ; mustering eight hundred soldiers of tried expe- rience and bravery, who had been directed to come thither silently and in small parties, without being informed whither they were going. A little squadron was prepared, of no more than five merchantmen, two of them vessels of thirty oars, with victuals adequate to the direct passage across the sea from Zakynthus to Syracuse ; since the ordinary passage, across from Korkyra and 1 Plato, Epistol. vii. p. 350. This is the account which Plato gives after the death of Dion, when affairs had taken a disastrous turn, about the extent of his own interference in the enterprise. But Dionysius supposed him to have been more decided in his countenance of the expedition; and Plato's letter addressed to Dion himself, after the victory of the latter at Syracuse, seems to bear out that supposition. Compare Epistol. iii. p. 315 E. ; iv. p. 320 A. combats at Syracuse (Aristotle apud Ciceron. Tusc. Disp. i. 2F. 53)
 * Plutarch, Dion, c. 22. Eudemus was afterwards slain in one of the