the seventh letter   

separated from the body. Therefore also we should consider it a lesser
evil to suffer great wrongs and outrages than to do them. The covetous
man, impoverished as he is in the soul, turns a deaf ear to this
teaching; or if he hears it, he laughs it to scorn with fancied
superiority, and shamelessly snatches for himself from every source
whatever his bestial fancy supposes will provide for him the means
of eating or drinking or glutting himself with that slavish and
gross pleasure which is falsely called after the goddess of love. He
is blind and cannot see in those acts of plunder which are accompanied
by impiety what heinous guilt is attached to each wrongful deed, and
that the offender must drag with him the burden of this impiety
while he moves about on earth, and when he has travelled beneath the
earth on a journey which has every circumstance of shame and misery.
It was by urging these and other like truths that I convinced
Dion, and it is I who have the best right to be angered with his
murderers in much the same way as I have with Dionysios. For both they
and he have done the greatest injury to me, and I might almost say
to all mankind, they by slaying the man that was willing to act
righteously, and he by refusing to act righteously during the whole of
his rule, when he held supreme power, in which rule if philosophy
and power had really met together, it would have sent forth a light to
all men, Greeks and barbarians, establishing fully for all the true
belief that there can be no happiness either for the community or
for the individual man, unless he passes his life under the rule of
righteousness with the guidance of wisdom, either possessing these
virtues in himself, or living under the rule of godly men and having
received a right training and education in morals. 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. This
ignorance it was which in that second venture wrecked and ruined
everything.
And now, for good luck's sake, let us on this third venture
abstain from words of ill omen. But, nevertheless, I advise you, his
friends, to imitate in Dion his love for his country and his temperate
habits of daily life, and to try with better auspices to carry out his
wishes-what these were, you have heard from me in plain words. And
whoever among you cannot live the simple Dorian life according to
the customs of your forefathers, but follows the manner of life of
Dion's murderers and of the Sicilians, do not invite this man to
join you, or expect him to do any loyal or salutary act; but invite
all others to the work of resettling all the States of Sicily and
establishing equality under the laws, summoning them from Sicily