Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/149

 CONSPIRACY On KALLIPPUS. 123 tent became universal. Among the general body of the citizens, Dion became detested as a tyrant, and the more detested because be had presented himself as a liberator ; while the soldiers also were in great part disaffected to him. 1 The spies and police of the Dionysian dynasty not having been yet reestablished, there was ample liberty at least of speech and censure ; so that Dion was soon furnished with full indications of the sentiment entertained towards him. He became disquieted and irritable at this change of public feeling ; 9 angry with the people, yet at the same time ashamed of himself. The murder of Herakleides sat heavy on his soul. The same man whom he had spared before when in the wrong, he had now slain when in the right The maxims of the Academy which had imparted to him so much self-satisfaction in the former act, could hardly fail to occasion a proportionate sickness of self-reproach in the latter. Dion was not a mere power-seeker, nor prepared for all that endless apparatus of mistrustful precaution, indispensable to a Grecian despot. When told that his life was in danger, he repli- ed that he would rather perish at once by the hands of the first assassin, than live in perpetual diffidence, towards friends as well as enemies. 3 One thus too good for a despot, and yet unfit for a popular leader, could not remain long in the precarious position occupied by Dion. His intimate friend, the Athenian Kallippus, seeing that the man who could destroy him would become popular with the Syracusans as well as with a large portion of the soldiery, formed a conspiracy accordingly. He stood high in the confi- dence of Dion, had been his companion during his exile at Athens, had accompanied him to Sicily, and entered Syracuse by his side. But Plato, anxious for the credit of the Academy, ig careful to inform us, that this inauspicious friendship arose, not 1 Cornel. Nepos, Dion, c. 7. 1 Plutarch, Dion, c. 56. 'AAA' 6 /J.EV Aiuv, em rotf KO.TU rbv ' fOf, Kai rbv 6vov tutlvcv, uf riva TOV (3iov teal TUV npu^euv avroti irpoK.eifif:vr]v, 6vax(>aiv^v uel Kal /?apw6|Uet'Of elnev, on TroAAo/uj f/67] &V7JGKEIV ETOlflOC EdTl Kdl TTUpf^aV 7^ j3ov7lO{lEV(f) O(j>UTTeiV OITOV, 1 ffl Strjtrei fir; (idvov rovf kx^povf a/Uu /cat Toi> Compare Plutarch, Apophthegm, p. 176 F.
 * Cornelius Nepos, Dion, c. 7. u lnsuetus male audiendi," etc.