Page:The Children's Plutarch, Greeks.djvu/117

 Sicily. Plato stayed on for a while, but the king regarded him less and less, and, at length, hinted that it was time for him to depart. Just before Plato left he was sitting at a banquet with Dionysius, and the king said:

"I suppose, Plato, when you return to Athens, you will pick my character to pieces before your friends, and tell them all my faults."

"I hope, sir," was Plato's reply, "that we shall have enough to talk about without talking of you!"

Soon afterward he sailed for Greece. Meanwhile Dion brooded over the troubles of his country, and longed to be able to set aside the tyrant, and give a free government to the citizens of Syracuse. He told his thoughts to his friends who had also been banished. Eight hundred of them assembled on a Grecian island, and prepared to travel to Sicily and deliver their country from the oppressor.

It was now midsummer, and the moon was at the full, and the eastern wind was blowing, day by day, and they would need this wind to carry them quickly across the sea. The eight hundred patriots–lovers of their fatherland–put on their bright armor, and marched to the temple of Apollo, and asked the God of the sun to bless them in their great adventure. The next night the moon was eclipsed, and the warriors were uneasy at the black