Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
the dead body with all his soldiers, and then addressed them,
they understood that it would have been impossible to have kept
the city quiet, as long as Dion and Heraclides were competitors
in the government.
Dion had a friend called Callippus, an Athenian, who, Plato
says, first made acquaintance and afterwards obtained
familiarity with him, not from any connection with his
philosophic studies, but on occasion afforded by the celebration
of the mysteries, and in the way of ordinary society. This man
went with him in all his military service, and was in great
honor and esteem; being the first of his friends who marched by
his side into Syracuse, wearing a garland upon his head, having
behaved himself very well in all the battles, and made himself
remarkable for his gallantry. He, finding that Dion's principal
and most considerable friends were cut off in the war,
Heraclides now dead, and the people without a leader, and that
the soldiers had a great kindness for him, like a perfidious and
wicked villain, in hopes to get the chief command of Sicily as
his reward for the ruin of his friend and benefactor, and, as
some say, being also bribed by the enemy with twenty talents to
destroy Dion, inveigled and engaged several of the soldiers in a
conspiracy against him, taking this cunning and wicked occasion
for his plot. He daily informed Dion of what he heard or what
he feigned the soldiers said against him; whereby he gained that
credit and confidence, that he was allowed by Dion to consort
privately with whom he would, and talk freely against him in any
company, that he might discover who were his secret and factious
maligners. By this means, Callippus in a short time got
together a cabal of all the seditious malcontents in the city;
and if anyone who would not be drawn in advised Dion that he
was tampered with, he was not troubled or concerned at it,
believing Callippus did it in compliance with his directions.
While this conspiracy was afoot, a strange and dreadful
apparition was seen by Dion. As he sat one evening in a gallery
in his house alone and thoughtful, hearing a sudden noise he
turned about, and saw at the end of the colonnade, by clear
daylight, a tall woman, in her countenance and garb like one of
the tragical Furies, with a broom in her hand, sweeping the
floor. Being amazed and extremely affrighted, he sent for some
of his friends, and told them what he had seen, entreating them
to stay with him and keep him company all night; for he was
excessively discomposed and alarmed, fearing that if he were
left alone the specter would again appear to him. He saw it no
more. But a few days after, his only son, being almost grown up
to man's estate, upon some displeasure and pet he had taken upon
a childish and frivolous occasion, threw himself headlong from
the top of the house and broke his neck.
While Dion was under this affliction, Callippus drove on his
conspiracy, and spread a rumor among the Syracusans, that Dion,
being now childless, was resolved to send for Dionysius's son,
Apollocrates, who was his wife's nephew and sister's grandson,
and make him his heir and successor. By this time, Dion and his
wife and sister began to suspect what was doing, and from all
hands information came to them of the plot. Dion, being
troubled, it is probable, for Heraclides's murder, which was
like to be a blot and stain upon his life and actions, in
continual weariness and vexation, declared he had rather die a
thousand times, and open his breast himself to the assassin,
than live not only in fear of his enemies but suspicion of his
friends. But Callippus, seeing the women very inquisitive to
search to the bottom of the business, took alarm, and came to
them, utterly denying it with tears in his eyes, and offering to
give them whatever assurances of his fidelity they desired.
They required that he should take the Great Oath, which was
after this manner. The juror went into the sanctuary of Ceres
and Proserpine, where, after the performance of some ceremonies,
he was clad in the purple vestment of the goddess, and, holding
a lighted torch in his hand, took his oath. Callippus did as
they required, and forswore the fact. And indeed he so little
valued the goddesses, that he stayed but till the very festival
of Proserpine, by whom he had sworn, and on that very day
committed his intended murder; as truly he might well enough
disregard the day, since he must at any other time as impiously
offend her, when he who had acted as her initiating priest
should shed the blood of her worshiper.
There were a great many in the conspiracy; and as Dion was at
home with several of his friends in a room with tables for
entertainment in it, some of the conspirators beset the house
around, others secured the doors and windows. The actual
intended murderers were some Zacynthians, who went inside in
their under-dresses without swords. Those outside shut the
doors upon them and kept them fast. The murderers fell on Dion,
endeavoring to stifle and crush him; then, finding they were
doing nothing, they called for a sword, but none durst open the
door. There were a great many within with Dion, but everyone
was for securing himself, supposing that by letting him lose his
life he should save his own, and therefore no man ventured to
assist him. When they had waited a good while, at length Lycon
the Syracusan reached a short sword in at the window to one of
the Zacynthians, and thus, like a victim at a sacrifice, this
long time in their power, and trembling for the blow, they
killed him. His sister, and wife big with child, they hurried
to prison, who poor lady, in her unfortunate condition was there
brought to bed of a son, which, by the consent of the keepers,
they intended to bring up, the rather because Callippus began
already to be embroiled in troubles.
After the murder of Dion, he was in great glory, and had the
sole government of Syracuse in his hands; and to that effect
wrote to Athens, a place which, next the immortal gods, being
guilty of such an abominable crime, he ought to have regarded
with shame and fear. But true it is, what is said of that city,
that the good men she breeds are the most excellent, and the bad
the most notorious; as their country also produces the most
delicious honey and the most deadly hemlock. Callippus,
however, did not long continue to scandalize fortune and upbraid
the gods with his prosperity, as though they connived at and
bore with the wretched man, while he purchased riches and power
by heinous impieties, but he quickly received the punishment he
deserved. For, going to take Catana, he lost Syracuse;
whereupon they report he said, he had lost a city and got a
bauble. Then, attempting Messena, he had most of his men cut
off, and, among the rest, Dion's murderers. When no city in
Sicily would admit him, but all hated and abhorred him, he went
into Italy and took Rhegium; and there, being in distress and
not able to maintain his soldiers, he was killed by Leptines and
Polysperchon, and, as fortune would have it with the same sword
by which Dion was murdered, which was known by the size, being
but short, as the Spartan swords, and the workmanship of it very
curious and artificial. Thus Callippus received the reward of
his villanies.
When Aristomache and Arete were released out of prison, Hicetes,
one of Dion's friends, took them to his house, and seemed to
intend to entertain them well and like a faithful friend.
Afterwards, being persuaded by Dion's enemies, he provided a
ship and pretended to send them into Peloponnesus, but commanded
the sailors, when they came out to sea, to kill them and throw
them overboard. Others say that they and the little boy were
thrown alive into the sea. This man also escaped not the due
recompense of his wickedness, for he was taken by Timoleon and
put to death, and the Syracusans, to revenge Dion, slew his two
daughters; of all which I have given a more particular account
in the life of Timoleon.
MARCUS BRUTUS
Marcus Brutus was descended from that Junius Brutus to whom the
ancient Romans erected a statue of brass in the capitol among
the images of their kings with a drawn sword in his hand, in
remembrance of his courage and resolution in expelling the
Tarquins and destroying the monarchy. But that ancient Brutus
was of a severe and inflexible nature, like steel of too hard a
temper, and having never had his character softened by study and
thought, he let himself be so far transported with his rage and
hatred against tyrants, that, for conspiring with them, he
proceeded to the execution even of his own sons. But this
Brutus, whose life we now write, having to the goodness of his
disposition added the improvements of learning and the study of
philosophy, and having stirred up his natural parts, of
themselves grave and gentle, by applying himself to business and
public affairs, seems to have been of a temper exactly framed
for virtue; insomuch that they who were most his enemies upon
account of his conspiracy against Caesar, if in that whole
affair there was any honorable or generous part, referred it
wholly to Brutus, and laid whatever was barbarous and cruel to
the charge of Cassius, Brutus's connection and familiar friend,
but not his equal in honesty and pureness of purpose. His
mother, Servilia, was of the family of Servilius Ahala, who,
when Spurius Maelius worked the people into a rebellion and
designed to make himself king, taking a dagger under his arm,
went forth into the marketplace, and, upon presence of having
some private business with him, came up close to him, and, as he
bent his head to hear what he had to say, struck him with his
dagger and slew him. And thus much, as concerns his descent by
the mother's side, is confessed by all; but as for his father's
family, they who for Caesar's murder bore any hatred or ill-will
to Brutus say that he came not from that Brutus who expelled the
Tarquins, there being none of his race left after the execution
of his two sons; but that his ancestor was a plebeian, son of
one Brutus, a steward, and only rose in the latest times to
office or dignity in the commonwealth. But Posidonius the
philosopher writes that it is true indeed what the history
relates, that two of the sons of Brutus who were of men's estate
were put to death, but that a third, yet an infant, was left
alive, from whom the family was propagated down to Marcus
Brutus; and further, that there were several famous persons of
this house in his time whose looks very much resembled the
statue of Junius Brutus. But of this subject enough.
Cato the philosopher was brother to Servilia, the mother of
Brutus, and he it was whom of all the Romans his nephew most
admired and studied to imitate, and he afterwards married his
daughter Porcia. Of all the sects of the Greek philosophers,
though there was none of which he had not been a hearer and in
which he had not made some proficiency, yet he chiefly esteemed
the Platonists; and, not much approving of the modern and middle
Academy, as it is called, he applied himself to the study of the
ancient. He was all his lifetime a great admirer of Antiochus
of the city of Ascalon, and took his brother Aristus into his
own house for his friend and companion, a man for his learning
inferior indeed to many of the philosophers, but for the
evenness of his temper and steadiness of his conduct equal to
the best. As for Empylus, of whom he himself and his friends
often make mention in their epistles, as one that lived with
Brutus, he was a rhetorician, and has left behind him a short
but well-written history of the death of Caesar, entitled Brutus.
In Latin, he had by exercise attained a sufficient skill to be