Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
unseen causes operate amidst the weakness of human and visible
things. For neither art nor nature did in that age produce anything
comparable to this work and wonder of fortune, which showed the very
same man, that was not long before supreme monarch of Sicily,
loitering about perhaps in the fish-market, or sitting in a
perfumer's shop, drinking the diluted wine of taverns, or squabbling
in the street with common women, or pretending to instruct the
singing women of the theater, and seriously disputing with them about
the measure and harmony of pieces of music that were performed there.
Such behavior on his part was variously criticized. He was thought
by many to act thus out of pure compliance with his own natural
indolent and vicious inclinations; while finer judges were of
opinion, that in all this he was playing a politic part, with a
design to be contemned among them, and that the Corinthians might not
feel any apprehension or suspicion of his being uneasy under his
reverse of fortune, or solicitous to retrieve it; to avoid which
dangers, he purposely and against his true nature affected an
appearance of folly and want of spirit in his private life and
amusements.
However it be, there are sayings and repartees of his left still upon
record, which seem to show that he not ignobly accommodated himself
to his present circumstances; as may appear in part from the
ingenuousness of the avowal he made on coming to Leucadia, which, as
well as Syracuse, was a Corinthian colony, where he told the
inhabitants, that he found himself not unlike boys who have been in
fault, who can talk cheerfully with their brothers, but are ashamed
to see their father; so, likewise, he, he said, could gladly reside
with them in that island, whereas he felt a certain awe upon his
mind, which made him averse to the sight of Corinth, that was a
common mother to them both. The thing is further evident from the
reply he once made to a stranger in Corinth, who deriding him in a
rude and scornful manner about the conferences he used to have with
philosophers, whose company had been one of his pleasures while yet a
monarch, and demanding, in fine, what he was the better now for all
those wise and learned discourses of Plato, "Do you think," said he,
"I have made no profit of his philosophy, when you see me bear my
change of fortune as I do?" And when Aristoxenus the musician, and
several others, desired to know how Plato offended him, and what had
been the ground of his displeasure with him, he made answer, that, of
the many evils attaching to the condition of sovereignty, the one
greatest infelicity was that none of those who were accounted friends
would venture to speak freely, or tell the plain truth; and that by
means of such he had been deprived of Plato's kindness. At another
time, when one of those pleasant companions that are desirous to pass
for wits, in mockery to Dionysius, as if he were still the tyrant,
shook out the folds of his cloak, as he was entering into the room
where he was, to show there were no concealed weapons about him,
Dionysius, by way of retort, observed, that he would prefer he would
do so on leaving the room, as a security that he was carrying nothing
off with him. And when Philip of Macedon, at a drinking party, began
to speak in banter about the verses and tragedies which his father,
Dionysius the elder, had left behind him, and pretended to wonder how
he could get any time from his other business to compose such
elaborate and ingenious pieces, he replied, very much to the purpose,
"It was at those leisurable hours, which such as you and I, and those
we call happy men, bestow upon our cups." Plato had not the
opportunity to see Dionysius at Corinth, being already dead before he
came thither; but Diogenes of Sinope, at their first meeting in the
street there, saluted him with the ambiguous expression, "O
Dionysius, how little you deserve your present life!" Upon which
Dionysius stopped and replied, "I thank you, Diogenes, for your
condolence." "Condole with you!" replied Diogenes; "do you not
suppose that, on the contrary, I am indignant that such a slave as
you, who, if you had your due, should have been let alone to grow
old, and die in the state of tyranny, as your father did before you,
should now enjoy the ease of private persons, and be here to sport
and frolic it in our society?" So that when I compare those sad
stories of Philistus, touching the daughters of Leptines, where he
makes pitiful moan on their behalf, as fallen from all the blessings
and advantages of powerful greatness to the miseries of a humble
life, they seem to me like the lamentations of a woman who has lost
her box of ointment, her purple dresses, and her golden trinkets.
Such anecdotes will not, I conceive, be thought either foreign to my
purpose of writing Lives, or unprofitable in themselves, by such
readers as are not in too much haste, or busied and taken up with
other concerns.
But if the misfortune of Dionysius appear strange and extraordinary,
we shall have no less reason to wonder at the good fortune of
Timoleon, who, within fifty days after his landing in Sicily, both
recovered the citadel of Syracuse, and sent Dionysius an exile into
Peloponnesus. This lucky beginning so animated the Corinthians, that
they ordered him a supply of two thousand foot and two hundred horse,
who, reaching Thurii, intended to cross over thence into Sicily; but
finding the whole sea beset with Carthaginian ships, which made their
passage impracticable, they were constrained to stop there, and watch
their opportunity: which time, however, was employed in a noble
action. For the Thurians, going out to war against their Bruttian
enemies, left their city in charge with these Corinthian strangers,
who defended it as carefully as if it had been their own country, and
faithfully resigned it up again.
Hicetes, in the interim, continued still to besiege the castle of
Syracuse, and hindered all provisions from coming in by sea to
relieve the Corinthians that were in it. He had engaged also, and
dispatched towards Adranum, two unknown foreigners to assassinate
Timoleon, who at no time kept any standing guard about his person,
and was then altogether secure, diverting himself, without any
apprehension, among the citizens of the place, it being a festival in
honor of their gods. The two men that were sent, having casually
heard that Timoleon was about to sacrifice, came directly into the
temple with poniards under their cloaks, and pressing in among the
crowd, by little and little got up close to the altar; but, as they
were just looking for a sign from each other to begin the attempt, a
third person struck one of them over the head with a sword, upon
whose sudden fall, neither he that gave the blow, nor the partisan of
him that received it, kept their stations any longer; but the one,
making way with his bloody sword, put no stop to his flight, till he
gained the top of a certain lofty precipice, while the other, laying
hold of the altar, besought Timoleon to spare his life, and he would
reveal to him the whole conspiracy. His pardon being granted, he
confessed that both himself and his dead companion were sent thither
purposely to slay him. While this discovery was made, he that killed
the other conspirator had been fetched down from his sanctuary of the
rock, loudly and often protesting, as he came along, that there was
no injustice in the fact, as he had only taken righteous vengeance
for his father's blood, whom this man had murdered before in the city
of Leontini; the truth of which was attested by several there
present, who could not choose but wonder too at the strange dexterity
of fortune's operations, the facility with which she makes one event
the spring and motion to something wholly different, uniting every
scattered accident and lose particular and remote action, and
interweaving them together to serve her purposes; so that things that
in themselves seem to have no connection or interdependence
whatsoever, become in her hands, so to say, the end and the beginning
of each other. The Corinthians, satisfied as to the innocence of
this seasonable feat, honored and rewarded the author with a present
of ten pounds in their money, since he had, as it were, lent the use
of his just resentment to the tutelar genius that seemed to be
protecting Timoleon, and had not preexpended this anger, so long ago
conceived, but had reserved and deferred, under fortune's guidance,
for his preservation, the revenge of a private quarrel.
But this fortunate escape had effects and consequences beyond the
present, as it inspired the highest hopes and future expectations of
Timoleon, making people reverence and protect him as a sacred person
sent by heaven to avenge and redeem Sicily. Hicetes, having missed
his aim in this enterprise, and perceiving, also, that many went off
and sided with Timoleon, began to chide himself for his foolish
modesty, that, when so considerable a force of the Carthaginians lay
ready to be commanded by him, he had employed them hitherto by
degrees and in small numbers, introducing their reinforcements by
stealth and clandestinely, as if he had been ashamed of the action.
Therefore, now laying aside his former nicety, he calls in Mago,
their admiral, with his whole navy, who presently set sail, and
seized upon the port with a formidable fleet of at least a hundred
and fifty vessels, landing there sixty thousand foot which were all
lodged within the city of Syracuse; so that, in all men's opinion,
the time anciently talked of and long expected, wherein Sicily should
be subjugated by barbarians, was now come to its fatal period. For
in all their preceding wars and many desperate conflicts with Sicily,
the Carthaginians had never been able, before this, to take Syracuse;
whereas Hicetes now receiving them, and putting the city into their
hands, you might see it become now as it were a camp of barbarians.
By this means, the Corinthian soldiers that kept the castle found
themselves brought into great danger and hardship; as, besides that
their provision grew scarce, and they began to be in want, because
the havens were strictly guarded and blocked up, the enemy exercised
them still with skirmishes and combats about their walls, and they
were not only obliged to be continually in arms, but to divide and
prepare themselves for assaults and encounters of every kind, and to
repel every variety of the means of offense employed by a besieging
army.
Timoleon made shift to relieve them in these straits, sending corn
from Catana by small fishing-boats and little skiffs, which commonly
gained a passage through the Carthaginian galleys in times of storm,
stealing up when the blockading ships were driven apart and dispersed
by the stress of weather; which Mago and Hicetes observing, they
agreed to fall upon Catana, from whence these supplies were brought
in to the besieged, and accordingly put off from Syracuse, taking
with them the best soldiers in their whole army. Upon this, Neon the
Corinthian, who was captain of those that kept the citadel, taking
notice that the enemies who stayed there behind were very negligent
and careless in keeping guard, made a sudden sally upon them as they
lay scattered, and, killing some and putting others to flight, he
took and possessed himself of that quarter which they call Acradina,
and was thought to be the strongest and most impregnable part of
Syracuse, a city made up and compacted as it were, of several towns
put together. Having thus stored himself with corn and money, he did
not abandon the place, nor retire again into the castle, but
fortifying the precincts of Acradina, and joining it by works to the
citadel, he undertook the defense of both. Mago and Hicetes were now