J96 1IISTORY OF GBEECE. chical community in Greece, surrounded by other free comma nities, and amidst universal hatred of despots. The politician! whom he had learnt to esteem were men trained in this school, maintaining a qualified ascendency against more or less of open competition from rivals, and obliged to look for the means of car- rying their views apart from simple dictation. Moreover, the person whom Timoleon had selected for his peculiar model, was Epaminondas, the noblest model that Greece afforded. 1 It was to this example that Timoleon owed in part his energetic patriot- ism combined with freedom from personal ambition his gentle- ness of political antipathy and the perfect habits of concilia- tory and popular dealing which he manifested amidst so many new and trying scenes to the end of his career. Now the education of Dion (as I have recounted in the preced ing chapter) had been something totally different He was the member of a despotic family, and had learnt his experience under the energetic, but perfectly self-willed, march of the elder Diony- sius. Of the temper or exigencies of a community of freemen, he had never learnt to take account. Plunged in this corrupting atmosphere, he had nevertheless imbibed generous and public- spirited aspirations : he had come to hold in abhorrence a gov- ernment of will, and to look for glory in contributing to replace it by a qualified freedom and a government of laws. But the source from whence he drank was, the Academy and its illustrious teacher Plato ; not from practical life, nor from the best practical politicians like Epaminondas. Accordingly, he had imbibed at the same time the idea, that though despotism was a bad thing, government thoroughly popular was a bad thing also; that, in other words, as soon as he had put down the despotism, it lay with him to determine how much liberty he would allow, or what laws he would sanction, for the community ; that instead of a despot, he was to become a despotic lawgiver. Here then lay the main difference between the two conqueron 1 Plutarch, Tinleon, c. 36. 'O /*j:Atffra ^rj'/M&df ;"rrc TtuoAeovrof f -a- ueivuvdar, etc. Polybius reckons Hermokratcs, Timoleon, and Pyrrhus, to be the most complete men of action (rfpayfiariKurarov^) of all those who had played a conspicuous part in Sicilian affairs (Polyb. xii. 25. o ed. Didot).
