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 curtailed; the conversation grew intellectual; and geometry became so much the fashion that nothing was to be seen in the palace but triangles and figures traced in the sand. Many of the foreign soldiers were dismissed; and at an anniversary sacrifice, when the herald made the usual prayer—"May the gods long preserve the Tyranny, and may the Tyrant live for ever,"—Dionysius is said to have stopped him with the words—"Imprecate no such curse on me or mine." So deeply was he impressed by Plato's earnest pleading in behalf of liberty and toleration, that he was even prepared, we are told, to establish a limited monarchy in place of the existing despotism, and to restore free government to those Greek cities in Sicily which had been enslaved by his father. But Plato discountenanced any such immediate action; his pupil must go through the prescribed training, must reform himself, and be imbued with the true philosophical spirit, before he could be allowed to put his principles into practice. And thus, like other visionary schemes of reform, the golden opportunity passed away for ever. The ascendancy of "the Sophist from Athens" (as Plato was contemptuously termed) roused the jealousy of the old Sicilian courtiers, and their slanders poisoned the mind of Dionysius, whose enthusiasm had already cooled. He grew suspicious of the designs of Dion, and, without giving him a chance of defending himself against his accusers, had him put on board a vessel and sent to Italy as an exile. Plato himself was detained a state prisoner in the palace, flattered and caressed by Dionysius, who appears to have had a