Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/259

 DION. 251 took all occasions by private slanders to render him obnoxious to the young man's displeasure ; as if he designed by his power at sea to surprise the govern- ment, and by the help of those naval forces confer the supreme authority upon his sister Aristomache'a children. But, indeed, the most apparent and the strong- est grounds for dislilie and hostility existed already in the difierence of his habits, and his reserved and separate way of living. For they, who, from the beginning, by flatteries and all unworthy artifices, courted the favor and familiarity of the prince, youtlifid and voluptuously bred, ministered to his pleasures, and sought how to find him daily some new amours and occupy him in vain amuse- ments, with wine or with women, and in other dissipa- tions ; by which means, the tyranny, like iron softened in the fire, seemed, indeed, to the subject to be more moder- ate and gentle, and to abate somewhat of its extreme severity ; the edge of it being blunted, not by the clem- ency, but rather the sloth and degeneracy of the sover- eign, whose dissoluteness, gaining ground daily, and grow- ing upon him, soon weakened and broke those " adaman- tine chains," with which his father, Dionysius, said he had left the monarchy fastened and secured. It is reported of him, that, having begun a drunken debauch, he con- tinued it ninety days without intermission ; * in all which time no person on business was allowed to appear, nor was any serious conversation heard at court, but drink- ing, singing, dancing, and buffoonery reigned there with- out conti'ol. It is likely then they had little kindness for Dion, who never indulged himself in any youthful pleasure or diver- sion. And so his very vktues were the matter of their number; Amiot, in his translation, seems, on the other hand, too little.
 * Ninety seems an impossible has three ('' trois jours"), which