Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/74

 48 HISTORY OF GREECE- war; exalting Dionysius from impending ruin, to assuied safety in the one, and to unmeasured triumph in the other. We are bound to allow for this good fortune (the like of which never be fel Agathokles), when we contemplate the long prosperity of Di- onysius 1, and when we adopt, as in justice we must, the panegyric of Scipio Africanus. The preceding chapter has detailed the means whereby Diony- sius attained his prize, and kept it : those employed by Agatho- kles analogous in spirit but of still darker coloring in the details will appear hereafter. That Hermokrates who had filled with credit the highest offices in the state and whom men had ac- quired the habit of following should aspire to become despot, was no unusual phajnomenon in Grecian politics ; but that Diony- sius should aim at mounting the same ladder, seemed absurd or even insane to use the phrase of Isokrates. 2 If, then, in spite of such disadvantage he succeeded in fastening round his country- men, accustomed to a free constitution as their birth-right, those " adamantine chains " which they were well known to abhor we may be sure that his plan of proceeding must have been dex- terously chosen, and prosecuted with consummate perseverance and audacity ; but we may be also sure that it was nefarious in the extreme. The machinery of fraud whereby the people were to be cheated into a temporary submission, as a prelude to the machinery of force whereby such submission was to be perpet- uated against their consent was the stock in trade of Grecian usurpers. But seldom does it appear prefaced by more impudent calumnies, or worked out with a larger measure of violence and spoliation, than in the case of Dionysius. He was indeed pow- erfully seconded at the outset by the danger of Syracuse from the Carthaginian arms. But his scheme of usurpation, far from di- minishing such danger, tended materially to increase it, by dis- uniting the city at so critical a moment. Dionysius achieved nothing in his first enterprise for the relief of Gela and Kamarino, 1 The example of Dionysius his long career of success and quiet death is among those cited by Cotta in Cicero (De Nat. Deor. iii. 33. 81, 85) to refute the doctrine of Balbus, as to the providence of the gods and their moral government over human affairs. uAoyuf Kal paiiKue, nal rofyu/aaf unavra ICCJUTTCLV ru. tyipavra. r?;i ivvafiiv TO.VTTJV, etc.
 * Isokrates, Or. v. (Philipp.) s. 73. Aioviiaiof. . . .lnidv[j.fioaf