These were the aims
which Dionysios injured, and for me everything else is a trifling
injury compared with this.
The murderer of Dion has, without knowing it, done the same as
Dionysios. For as regards Dion, I know right well, so far as it is
possible for a man to say anything positively about other men, that,
if he had got the supreme power, he would never have turned his mind
to any other form of rule, but that, dealing first with Syracuse,
his own native land, when he had made an end of her slavery, clothed
her in bright apparel, and given her the garb of freedom, he would
then by every means in his power have ordered aright the lives of
his fellow-citizens by suitable and excellent laws; and the thing next
in order, which he would have set his heart to accomplish, was to
found again all the States of Sicily and make them free from the
barbarians, driving out some and subduing others, an easier task for
him than it was for Hiero. If these things had been accomplished by
a man who was just and brave and temperate and a philosopher, the same
belief with regard to virtue would have been established among the
majority which, if Dionysios had been won over, would have been
established, I might almost say, among all mankind and would have
given them salvation. But now some higher power or avenging fiend
has fallen upon them, inspiring them with lawlessness, godlessness and
acts of recklessness issuing from ignorance, the seed from which all
evils for all mankind take root and grow and will in future bear the
bitterest harvest for those who brought them into being.
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