Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/256

 248 DION. before reputed a person of lofty character, of a noble mind, and daring courage, yet these excellent quaUfica- tions all received a great development from the happy chance which conducted Plato into Sicily ; not assuredly by any human device or calculation, but some super- natural power, designing that this remote cause should hereafter occasion the. recovery of the SiciUans' lost liberty and the subversion of the tyrannical government, brought the philosopher out of Italy to Syracuse, and made acquaintance between him and Dion. Dion was, indeed, at this time extremely young in years, but of all the scholars that attended Plato he was the quickest and aptest to learn, and the most prompt and eager to prac- tise, the lessons of virtue, as Plato himself reports of him, and his own actions sufficiently testify. For though he had been bred up under a tyrant in habits of submission, accustomed to a life, on the one hand of servility and in- timidation, and yet on the other of vulgar display and luxury, the mistaken happiness of people that knew no better thing than pleasure and self-indulgence, yet, at the first taste of reason and a philosophy that demands obedience to virtue, his soul was set in a flame, and in the simple innocence of youth, concluding, from his own disposition, that the same reasons would work the same effects upon Dionj-sius, he made it his business, and at length obtained the favor of him, at a leisure hour, to hear Plato. At this their meeting, the subjectrmatter of their dis- course in general was human virtue, but, more particu- larly, they disputed concerning fortitude, which Plato proved tyrants, of all men, had the least pretence to ; and thence proceeding to treat of justice, asserted the happy estate of the just, and the miserable condition of the unjust ; arguments which Dionysius would not hear out, but, feeling himself, as it were, convicted by his