Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/111

 DION LEVIES TROOPS. 8$ along the Tarentine Gulf was impracticable, in the face of the maritime power of Dionysius. 1 Such was the contemptible force with which Dion ventured to at- tack the greatest of all Grecian potentates in his own stronghold and island. Dionysius had now reigned as despot at Syracuse between ten and eleven years. Inferior as he personally was to his father, it does not seem that the Syracusan power had yet materially declined in his hands. We know little about the political facts of his reign ; but the veteran Philistus, his chief adviser and officer, appears to have kept together the larger part of the great means bequeathed by the elder Dionysius. The disparity of force, therefore, be- tween the assailant and the party assailed, was altogether extrava gant. To Dion, personally, indeed, such disparity was a matter of indifference. To a man of his enthusiastic temperament, so great was the heroism and sublimity of the enterprise, combining lib- eration of his country from a despot, with revenge for gross out- rages to himself, that he was satisfied if he could only land in Sicily with no matter how small a force, accounting it honor enough to perish in such a cause. 2 Such was the emphatic lan- guage of Dion, reported to us by Aristotle ; who (being then among the pupils of Plato) may probably have heard it with his own ears. To impartial contemporary spectators, like Demos thenes, the attempt seemed hopeless. 3 But the intelligent men of the Academy who accompanied Dion, would not have thrown their lives away in contemplation of a glorious martyrdom ; nor were either they or he ignorant, that there existed circumstances, not striking the eye of the ordinary spectator, which materially weakened the great apparent security of Dionysius. First, there was the pronounced and almost unanimous discon tent of the people of Syracuse. Though prohibited from all public manifestations, they had been greatly agitated by the origi- nal project of Dion to grant liberty to the city by the inclina- tions even of Dionysius himself towards the same end, so soon un- 1 Plutarch, Dion, c. 23-25. 8 Aristotel. Politic, v. 8, 17. 3 See Orat. adv. Leptinem, s. 179. p. 506 : an oration delivered about twtf years afterwards ; not long after the victory of Dion. Compare Diodor. xvi. 9 ; Plut Arch, Timokon, c. 2. VOL. XI. 8