[101] Pseudo-Aristotel. Œconomic. ii. c. 21, 42; Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, iii. 34, 83, 84; Valerius Maxim. i. 1.
[102] Plutarch, Dion, c. 28; Plutarch, De Curiositate, p. 523 A; Aristotel. Politic. v. 9, 3. The titles of these spies—αἱ ποταγωγίδες καλούμεναι—as we read in Aristotle; or οἱ ποταγωγεῖς—as we find in Plutarch—may perhaps both be correct.
[103] Cicero in Verrem, v. 55, 143.
[104] Plutarch, De Fortunâ Alexandr. Magni, p. 338 B. What were the crimes of Dionysius which Pausanias had read and describes by the general words Διονυσίου τὰ ἀνοσιώτατα—and which he accuses Philistus of having intentionally omitted in his history—we cannot now tell (Pausan. i. 13, 2: compare Plutarch, Dion, c. 36). An author named Amyntianus, contemporary with Pausanias, and among those perused by Photius (Codex 131), had composed parallel lives of Dionysius and the Emperor Domitian.
[105] Plato, Epistol. vii. p. 332 A; Aristotel. Politic. v. 5, 6.
[106] Plato, Epistol. vii. p. 332 D. Διονύσιος δὲ εἰς μίαν πόλιν ἀθροίσας πᾶσαν Σικελίαν ὑπὸ σοφίας, πιστεύων οὐδενὶ, μόγις ἐσώθη, etc.
This brief, but significant expression of Plato, attests the excessive mistrust which haunted Dionysius, as a general fact; which is illustrated by the anecdotes of Cicero, Tuscul. Disput. v. 20, 23; and De Officiis, ii. 7; Plutarch, Dion, c. 9; Diodor. xiv. 2.
The well-known anecdote of Damoklês, and the sword which Dionysius caused to be suspended over his head by a horsehair, in the midst of the enjoyments of the banquet, as an illustration how little was the value of grandeur in the midst of terror—is recounted by Cicero.
[107] Plutarch, Dion, c. 3; Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 6.
[108] This sentiment, pronounced by Plato, Isokratês, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, etc., is nowhere so forcibly laid out as in the dialogue of Xenophon called Hiero—of which indeed it forms the text and theme. Whoever reads this picture of the position of a Grecian τύραννος, will see that it was scarcely possible for a man so placed to be other than a cruel and oppressive ruler.