his instrumentality it would seem that Dion and Plato were banished from Syracuse. He commanded the fleet in the struggle between Dion and Dionysius, and lost a battle, whereupon he was seized and put to death by the people. During his banishment he wrote his historical work, τὰ Σικελικά, divided into two parts and numbering eleven books. The first division embraced the history of Sicily from the earliest times down to the capture of Agrigentum (seven books), and the remaining four books dealt with the life of Dionysius the elder. He afterwards added a supplement in two books, giving an account of the younger Dionysius, which he did not, however, complete. He is described as an imitator, though at a great distance, of Thucydides, and hence was known as "the little Thucydides." As an historian he is deficient in conscientiousness and candour; he appears as a partisan of Dionysius, and seeks to throw a veil over his discreditable actions. Still he belongs to the most important of the Greek historians (Lübker).
Theodorus of Gadara, a rhetorician in the first century after Christ; tutor of Tiberius, first in Rome, afterwards in Rhodes, from which town he called himself a Rhodian, and where Tiberius during his exile diligently attended his instruction. He was the author of various grammatical and other works, but his fame chiefly rested on his abilities as a teacher, in which capacity he seems to have had great influence (Pauly). He was the author of that famous description of Tiberius which is given by Suetonius (Tib. 57), πηλὸς αἵματι πεφυραμένος, "A clod kneaded together with blood."[1]
Theopompus, a native of Chios; born 380 b.c. He came to Athens while still a boy, and studied eloquence under Isokrates, who is said, in comparing him with another pupil, Ephorus, to have made use of the image which we find in
- ↑ A remarkable parallel, if not actually an imitation, occurs in Goethe's Faust, "Du Spottgeburt von Dreck und Feuer."
