But as it is, do you think that you will escape the
reputation of cowardice by making excuses about the distance of the
journey, the length of the sea voyage, and the amount of labour
involved? Far from it." To reproaches of this kind what creditable
reply could I have made? Surely none.
I took my departure, therefore, acting, so far as a man can act,
in obedience to reason and justice, and for these reasons leaving my
own occupations, which were certainly not discreditable ones, to put
myself under a tyranny which did not seem likely to harmonise with
my teaching or with myself. By my departure I secured my own freedom
from the displeasure of Zeus Xenios, and made myself clear of any
charge on the part of philosophy, which would have been exposed to
detraction, if any disgrace had come upon me for faint-heartedness and
cowardice.
On my arrival, to cut a long story short, I found the court of
Dionysios full of intrigues and of attempts to create in the sovereign
ill-feeling against Dion. I combated these as far as I could, but with
very little success; and in the fourth month or thereabouts,
charging Dion with conspiracy to seize the throne, Dionysios put him
on board a small boat and expelled him from Syracuse with ignominy.
All of us who were Dion's friends were afraid that he might take
vengeance on one or other of us as an accomplice in Dion's conspiracy.
With regard to me, there was even a rumour current in Syracuse that
I had been put to death by Dionysios as the cause of all that had
occurred.
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