Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/81

 DION. 55 Anstomache, daughter of Hipparinus, he had two sons, Hipparinus and Nysaeus and two daughters, Sophrosyne and Arete. 1 Dio- nysius the younger can hardly have been less than twenty-five years old at the death of his father and namesake. Hipparinus, the eldest son by the other wife, was considerably younger. Aris- tomache his mother had long remained childless ; a fact which the elder Dionysius ascribed to incantations wrought by the moth- er of the Lokrian wife, and punished by putting to death the sup- posed sorceress. 2 The offspring of Aristomache, though the younger brood of the two, derived considerable advantage from the presence and coun- tenance of her brother Dion. Hipparinus, father of Dion and Aristomache, had been the principal abettor of the elder Diony- sius in his original usurpation, in order to retrieve his own fortune, 3 ruined by profligate expenditure. So completely had that object been accomplished, that his son Dion was now among the richest men in Syracuse, 4 possessing property estimated at above one hundred talents (about 23,000). Dion was, besides, son-in-law to the elder Dionysius, who had given his daughter Sophrosyne in marriage to his son (by a different mother) the younger Diony- 1 Plutarch, Dion, c. 6 ; Theopompus, Pr. 204, ed. Didot. ap. Athenaeum, x. p. 435 ; Diodor. xvi. 6 ; Cornel. Nepos (Dion, c. 1 ). The Scholiast on Plato's fourth Epistle gives information respecting the personal relations and marriages of the elder Dionysius, not wholly agree ing with what is stated in the sixth chapter of Plutarch's Life of Dion. 2 Plutarch, Dion, c. 3. The age of the younger Dionysius i nowhere positively specified. But in the year 356 B. c. or 355 B. c., at the latest he had a son, Apollokrates, old enough to be entrusted with the com- mand of Ortygia, when he himself evacuated it for the first time (Plutarch, Dion, c. 37). We cannot suppose Apollokrates to have been less than six- teen years of age at the moment when he was entrusted with such a func- tion, having his mother and sisters under his charge (c. 50). Apollokrates therefore must have been born at least as early as 372 B. c.; perhaps even earlier. Suppose Dionysius the younger to have been twenty years of age when Apollokrates was born ; he would thus be in his twenty-fifth year in the beginning of 367 B. c., when Dionysius the elder died. The expres- sions of Plato, as to the youth of Dionysius the younger at that juncture, we not unsuitable to such an age. 4 Plato Epistol. vii. p. 347 A. Compare the offer of Dion to maintain fifty triremes at bis own expense (Plutarch, Dion, c. 6.)
 * Aristotel. Polit. v. 5, 6.