Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/212

 18G HISTORY OF GREECE. reward for his sphadid services, the Syracusans vote! to him t house in the city, and a landed property amorg the best in the neighborhood. Here he fixed his residence, sending for his wife and family to Corinth.i Yet though Timoleon had renounced every species of official authority, and all means of constraint, his influence as an adviser over the judgment, feelings and actions, not only of Syracusans, but of Sicilians generally, was as great as ever ; perhaps greater because the fact of his spontaneous resignation gave him one title more to confidence. Karely is it allowed to mortal man, to establish so transcendent a claim to confidence and esteem as Ti- moleon now presented ; upon so many different grounds, and with so little of alloy or abatement. To possess a counsellor whom every one reverenced, without suspicions 01 feai s oi any kind who had not only given conspicuous proofs of uncommon energy combined with skilful management, but enjoyed besides, in a pecu- liar degree, the favor of the gods was a benefit unspeakably precious to the Sicilians at this juncture. For it was now the time when not merely Syracuse, but other cities of Sicily also, were aiming to strengthen their reconstituted free communities by a fresh supply of citizens from abroad. During the sixty years which had elapsed since the first formidable invasion wherein the Carthaginian Hannibal had conquered Selinus, there had been a series of causes all tending to cripple and diminish, and none tc renovate, the Grecian population of Sicily. The Carthaginian attacks, the successful despotism of the first Dionysius, and the disturbed reign of the second, all contributed to the same result About the year 352 - 351 B. c., Plato (as has been already men- tioned) expresses his fear of an extinction of Hellenism in Sicily giving place before Phenician or Campanian force. 2 And what was a sad possibility, even in 352 351 B. c. had become nearer to a probability in 344 B. c., before Timoleon landed, in the then miserable condition of the island. His unparalleled success and matchless personal behavior combined with the active countenance of Corinth without had completely turned the tide. In the belief of all Greeks, Sicily 1 Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 36.
 * Plato, Epistol. viii. p. 353 F.