DION DICTATOR. 121 exact promises he made, we do not know. But he main- tained his own power, the military force, and the despotic fortifica- tions, provisionally undiminished. And who could tell how long he intended to maintain them ? That he really had in his mind purposes such as Plato 1 gives him credit for, I believe to be true. But he took no practical step towards them. He had resolved to accomplish them, not through persuasion of the Syracusans, but through his own power. This was the excuse which he probably made to himself, and which pushed him down that inclined plane from whence there was afterwards no escape. It was not likely that Dion's conduct would pass without a pro test. That protest came loudest from Herakleides; who, so long as Dion had been acting in the real service of Syracuse, had op- posed him in a culpable and traitorous manner and who now again found himself in opposition to Dion, when opposition had become the side of patriotism as well as of danger. Invited by Dion to attend the council, he declined, saying that he was now nothing more than a private citizen, and would attend the public assembly along with the rest ; a hint which implied, plainly as well as reasonably, that Dion also ought to lay down his power, now that the common enemy was put down. 2 The surrender of Ortygia had produced strong excitement among the Syracusans. They were impatient to demolish the dangerous stronghold erect- ed in that islet by the elder Dionysius ; they both hoped and ex- pected, moreover, to see the destruction of that splendid funeral monument which his son had built in his honor, and the urn with its ashes cast out. Now of these two measures, the first was one of pressing and undeniable necessity, which Dion ought to have consummated without a moment's delay ; the second was compliance with a popular antipathy at that time natural, which would have served as an evidence that the old despotism stood condemned. Yet Dion did neither. It was Herakleides who cen- sured him, and moved for the demolition of the Dionysian Bastile ; thus having the glory of attaching his name to the measure eagerly performed by Timoleon eleven years afterwards, the mo- ment that he found himself master of Syracuse. Not only Dion riato, Epistol. vii. p. 335 F. p. 351 A.; Epistol. viii. p. 357 A.
- Plutarch, Dion, c. 53.
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