On entering Ortygia, Dion saw for the first time after a separation of about twelve years, his sister Aristomachê, his wife Aretê, and family. The interview was one of the tenderest emotion and tears of delight to all. Aretê, having been made against her own consent the wife of Timokratês, was at first afraid to approach Dion. But he received and embraced her with unabated affection.[248] He conducted both her and his son away from the Dionysian acropolis, in which they had been living since his absence, into his own house; having himself resolved not to dwell in the acropolis, but to leave it as a public fort or edifice belonging to Syracuse. However, this renewal of his domestic happiness was shortly afterwards imbittered by the death of his son; who having imbibed from Dionysius drunken and dissolute habits, fell from the roof of the house, in a fit of intoxication or frenzy, and perished.[249]
Dion was now at the pinnacle of power as well as of glory. With means altogether disproportionate, he had achieved the expulsion of the greatest despot in Greece, even from an impregnable stronghold. He had combated danger and difficulty with conspicuous resolution, and had displayed almost chivalrous magnanimity. Had he “breathed out his soul”[250] at the instant of triumphant entry in Ortygia, the Academy would have been glorified by a pupil of first-rate and unsullied merit. But that cup of prosperity, which poisoned so many other eminent Greeks, had now the fatal effect of exaggerating all the worst of Dion’s qualities, and damping all the best.
Plutarch indeed boasts, and we may perfectly believe, that he maintained the simplicity of his table, his raiment, and his habits of life, completely unchanged—now that he had become master of Syracuse, and an object of admiration to all Greece. In this respect, Plato and the Academy had reason to be proud of their pupil.[251] But the public mistakes, now to be recounted, were not the less mischievous to his countrymen as well as to himself.
From the first moment of his entry into Syracuse from Peloponnesus, Dion had been suspected and accused of aiming at the expulsion of Dionysius, only in order to transfer the despotism to himself. His haughty and repulsive manners, raising against him personal antipathies everywhere, were cited as confirming the charge. Even at moments when Dion was laboring for the genuine good of the Syracusans, this suspicion had always more or less crossed his path; robbing him of well-merited gratitude—and at the same time discrediting his opponents, and the people of Syracuse, as guilty of mean jealousy towards a benefactor.
The time had now come when Dion was obliged to act in such a manner as either to confirm, or to belie, such unfavorable auguries. Unfortunately both his words and his deeds confirmed them in the strongest manner. The proud and repulsive external demeanor, for which he had always been notorious, was rather aggravated than softened. He took pride in showing, more plainly than ever, that he despised everything which looked like courting popularity.[252]
If the words and manner of Dion were thus significant, both what he did, and what he left undone, was more significant still. Of that great boon of freedom, which he had so loudly promised to the Syracusans, and which he had directed his herald to proclaim on first entering their walls, he conferred absolutely nothing. He retained his dictatorial power unabated, and his military force certainly without reduction, if not actually reinforced; for as Apollokrates did not convey away with him the soldiers in Ortygia, we may reasonably presume that a part of them at least remained to embrace the service of Dion. He preserved the acropolis and fortifications of Ortygia just as they were, only garrisoned by troops obeying his command instead of that of Dionysius. His victory made itself felt in abundant presents to his own friends and soldiers;[253] but to the people of Syracuse, it produced nothing better than a change of masters.
It was not indeed the plan of Dion to constitute a permanent despotism. He intended to establish himself king, but to grant to the Syracusans what in modern times would be called a constitution. Having imbibed from Plato and the Academy as well as from his own convictions and tastes, aversion to a pure democracy, he had resolved to introduce a Lacedæmonian scheme of mixed government, combining king, aristocracy, and people, under certain provisions and limitations. Of this general tenor are the recommendations addressed both to him, and to the Syracusans after his death, by Plato; who however seems to contemplate, along with the political scheme, a Lykurgean reform of manners and practice. To aid in framing and realizing his scheme, Dion sent to Corinth to invite counsellors and auxiliaries; for Corinth was suitable to his views, not simply as mother city of Syracuse, but also as a city thoroughly oligarchical.[254]
That these intentions on the part of Dion were sincere, we need not question. They had been originally conceived without any views of acquiring the first place for himself, during the life of the elder Dionysius, and were substantially the same as those which he had exhorted the younger Dionysius to realize, immediately after the death of the father. They are the same as he had intended to further by calling in Plato,—with what success, has been already recounted. But Dion made the fatal mistake of not remarking, that the state of things, both as to himself and as to Syracuse, was totally altered during the interval between 367 B. C. and 354 B. C. If at the former period, when the Dionysian dynasty was at the zenith of power, and Syracuse completely prostrated, the younger Dionysius could have been persuaded spontaneously and without contest or constraint to merge his own despotism in a more liberal system, even dictated by himself—it is certain that such a free, though moderate concession, would at first have provoked unbounded gratitude, and would have had a chance (though that is more doubtful) of giving long-continued satisfaction. But the situation was totally different in 354 B. C., when Dion, after the expulsion of Apollokrates, had become master in Ortygia; and it was his mistake that he still insisted on applying the old plans when they had become not merely unsuitable, but mischievous. Dion was not in the position of an established despot, who consents to renounce, for the public good, powers which every one knows he can retain, if he chooses; nor were the Syracusans any longer passive, prostrate, and hopeless. They had received a solemn promise of liberty, and had been thereby inflamed into vehement action, by Dion himself; who had been armed by them with delegated powers, for the special purpose of putting down Dionysius. That under these circumstances Dion, instead of laying down his trust, should constitute himself king—even limited king—and determine how much liberty he would consent to allot to the Syracusans who had appointed him—this was a proceeding which they could not but resent as a flagrant usurpation, and which he could only hope to maintain by force.
The real conduct of Dion, however, was worse even than this. He manifested no visible evidence of realizing even that fraction of popular liberty which had entered into his original scheme. What exact promises he made, we do not know. But he maintained his own power, the military force, and the despotic fortifications, provisionally undiminished. And who could tell how long he intended to maintain them? That he really had in his mind purposes such as Plato[255] gives him credit for, I believe to be true. But he took no practical step towards them. He had resolved to accomplish them, not through persuasion of the Syracusans, but through his own power. This was the excuse which he probably made to himself, and which pushed him down that inclined plane from whence there was afterwards no escape.
It was not likely that Dion’s conduct would pass without a protest. That protest came loudest from Herakleides; who, so long as Dion had been acting in the real service of Syracuse, had opposed him in a culpable and traitorous manner—and who now again found himself in opposition to Dion, when opposition had become the side of patriotism as well as of danger. Invited by Dion to attend the council, he declined, saying that he was now nothing more than a private citizen, and would attend the public assembly along with the rest; a hint which implied, plainly as well as reasonably, that Dion also ought to lay down his power, now that the common enemy was put down.[256] The surrender of Ortygia had produced strong excitement among the Syracusans. They were impatient to demolish the dangerous stronghold erected in that islet by the elder Dionysius; they both hoped and expected, moreover, to see the destruction of that splendid funeral monument which his son had built in his honor, and the urn with its ashes cast out. Now of these two measures, the first was one of pressing and undeniable necessity, which Dion ought to have consummated without a moment’s delay; the second was compliance with a popular antipathy at that time natural, which would have served as an evidence that the old despotism stood condemned. Yet Dion did neither. It was Herakleides who censured him, and moved for the demolition of the Dionysian Bastile; thus having the glory of attaching his name to the measure eagerly performed by Timoleon eleven years afterwards, the moment that he found himself master of Syracuse. Not only Dion did not originate the overthrow of this dangerous stronghold, but when Herakleides proposed it, he resisted him and prevented it from being done.[257] We shall find the same den serving for successive despots—preserved by Dion for them as well as for himself, and only removed by the real liberator Timoleon.