the seventh letter   

fight against pleasures; nor is it attained if he goes on to kill
the men of substance, whom he speaks of as the enemy, and to plunder
their possessions, and invites his confederates and supporters to do
the same, with the object that no one shall say that it is his
fault, if he complains of being poor. The same is true if anyone
renders services of this kind to the State and receives honours from
her for distributing by decrees the property of the few among the
many-or if, being in charge the affairs of a great State which rules
over many small ones, he unjustly appropriates to his own State the
possessions of the small ones. For neither a Dion nor any other man
will, with his eyes open, make his way by steps like these to a
power which will be fraught with destruction to himself and his
descendants for all time; but he will advance towards constitutional
government and the framing of the justest and best laws, reaching
these ends without executions and murders even on the smallest scale.
This course Dion actually followed, thinking it preferable to suffer
iniquitous deeds rather than to do them; but, while taking precautions
against them, he nevertheless, when he had reached the climax of
victory over his enemies, took a false step and fell, a catastrophe
not at all surprising. For a man of piety, temperance and wisdom, when
dealing with the impious, would not be entirely blind to the character
of such men, but it would perhaps not be surprising if he suffered the
catastrophe that might befall a good ship's captain, who would not
be entirely unaware of the approach of a storm, but might be unaware
of its extraordinary and startling violence, and might therefore be
overwhelmed by its force. The same thing caused Dion's downfall. For
he was not unaware that his assailants were thoroughly bad men, but he
was unaware how high a pitch of infatuation and of general
wickedness and greed they had reached. This was the cause of his
downfall, which has involved Sicily in countless sorrows.
As to the steps which should be taken after the events which I
have now related, my advice has been given pretty fully and may be
regarded as finished; and if you ask my reasons for recounting the
story of my second journey to Sicily, it seemed to me essential that
an account of it must be given because of the strange and
paradoxical character of the incidents. If in this present account
of them they appear to anyone more intelligible, and seem to anyone to
show sufficient grounds in view of the circumstances, the present
statement is adequate and not too lengthy.

-THE END-