To a father or mother I do not think that piety allows one to offer
compulsion, unless they are suffering from an attack of insanity;
and if they are following any regular habits of life which please them
but do not please me, I would not offend them by offering useless,
advice, nor would I flatter them or truckle to them, providing them
with the means of satisfying desires which I myself would sooner die
than cherish. The wise man should go through life with the same
attitude of mind towards his country. If she should appear to him to
be following a policy which is not a good one, he should say so,
provided that his words are not likely either to fall on deaf ears
or to lead to the loss of his own life. But force against his native
land he should not use in order to bring about a change of
constitution, when it is not possible for the best constitution to
be introduced without driving men into exile or putting them to death;
he should keep quiet and offer up prayers for his own welfare and
for that of his country.
These are the principles in accordance with which I should advise
you, as also, jointly with Dion, I advised Dionysios, bidding him in
the first place to live his daily life in a way that would make him as
far as possible master of himself and able to gain faithful friends
and supporters, in order that he might not have the same experience as
his father. For his father, having taken under his rule many great
cities of Sicily which had been utterly destroyed by the barbarians,
was not able to found them afresh and to establish in them trustworthy
governments carried on by his own supporters, either by men who had no
ties of blood with him, or by his brothers whom he had brought up when
they were younger, and had raised from humble station to high office
and from poverty to immense wealth.
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