Not one of these was he able to
work upon by persuasion, instruction, services and ties of kindred, so
as to make him a partner in his rule; and he showed himself inferior
to Darius with a sevenfold inferiority. For Darius did not put his
trust in brothers or in men whom he had brought up, but only in his
confederates in the overthrow of the Mede and Eunuch; and to these
he assigned portions of his empire, seven in number, each of them
greater than all Sicily; and they were faithful to him and did not
attack either him or one another. Thus he showed a pattern of what the
good lawgiver and king ought to be; for he drew up laws by which he
has secured the Persian empire in safety down to the present time.
Again, to give another instance, the Athenians took under their rule
very many cities not founded by themselves, which had been hard hit by
the barbarians but were still in existence, and maintained their
rule over these for seventy years, because they had in each them men
whom they could trust. But Dionysios, who had gathered the whole of
Sicily into a single city, and was so clever that he trusted no one,
only secured his own safety with great difficulty. For he was badly
off for trustworthy friends; and there is no surer criterion of virtue
and vice than this, whether a man is or is not destitute of such
friends.
This, then, was the advice which Dion and I gave to Dionysios,
since, owing to bringing up which he had received from his father,
he had had no advantages in the way of education or of suitable
lessons, in the first place.
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