Dion   

DION

IF it be true, Sosius Senecio, that, as Simonides tells us-

"Of the Corinthians Troy does not complain"

for having taken part with the Achaeans in the siege, because the
Trojans also had Corinthians (Glaucus, who sprang from Corinth)
fighting bravely on their side, so also it may be fairly said that
neither Romans nor Greeks can quarrel with the Academy, each nation
being equally represented in the following pair of lives, which will
give an account of Brutus and of Dion,- Dion, who was Plato's own
hearer, and Brutus, who was brought up in his philosophy. They came
from one and the self-same school, where they had been trained alike
to run the race of honour; nor need we wonder that in the
performance of actions often most nearly allied and akin, they both
bore evidence to the truth of what their guide and teacher said, that,
without the concurrence of power and success, with justice and
prudence, public actions do not attain their proper, great, and
noble character. For as Hippomachus the wrestling-master affirmed,
he could distinguish his scholars at a distance, though they were
but carrying meat from the shambles, so it is very probable that the
principles of those who have had the same good education should appear
with a resemblance in all their actions, creating in them a certain
harmony and proportion, at once agreeable and becoming.
We may also draw a close parallel of the lives of the two men from
their fortunes, wherein chance, even more than their own designs, made
them nearly alike. For they were both cut off by an untimely death,
not being able to accomplish those ends which through many risks and
difficulties they aimed at. But, above all, this is most wonderful;
that by preternatural interposition both of them had notice given of
their approaching death by an unpropitious form, which visibly
appeared to them. Although there are people who utterly deny any
such thing, and say that no man in his right senses ever yet saw any
supernatural phantom or apparition, but that children only, and
silly women, or men disordered by sickness, in some aberration of
the mind or distemperature of the body, have had empty and extravagant
imaginations, whilst the real evil genius, superstition, was in
themselves. Yet if Dion and Brutus' men of solid understanding, and
philosophers, not to be easily deluded by fancy or discomposed by
any sudden apprehension, were thus affected by visions that they
forthwith declared to their friends what they had seen, I know not how
we can avoid admitting again the utterly exploded opinion of the
oldest times, that evil and beguiling spirits, out of envy to good
men, and a desire of impeding their good deeds, make efforts to excite
in them feelings of terror and distraction, to make them shake and
totter in their virtue, lest by a steady and unbiased perseverance
they should obtain a happier condition than these beings after
death. But I shall leave these things for another opportunity, and
in this twelfth book of the lives of great men compared one with
another, begin with his who was the elder.
Dionysius the First, having possessed himself of the government,
at once took to wife the daughter of Hermocrates, the Syracusan.
She, in an outbreak which the citizens made before the new power was
well settled, was abused in such a barbarous and outrageous manner
that for shame she put an end to her own life. But Dionysius, when
he was re-established and confirmed in his supremacy, married two
wives together, one named Doris, of Locri, the other Aristomache, a
native of Sicily, and daughter of Hipparinus, a man of the first
quality in Syracuse, and colleague with Dionysius when he was first
chosen general with unlimited powers for the war. It is said he
married them both in one day, and no one ever knew which of the two he
first made his wife; and ever after he divided his kindness equally