Simonides, the elegiac poet. He was a native of Ceos, but lived much, and died in Sicily, where he was a great favourite. His repeated delays and final answer to Hiero, when desired to give a definition of the Deity, have been deservedly celebrated, and are a lesson to presumption for all time. He first requested a day to consider; then two more days; then doubled and redoubled the number; till the king, demanding the reason of this conduct, was told by the poet that “the longer he considered the question, the more impossible he found it to answer.”
Epicharmus, the supposed founder of comedy. He was a great philosopher as well as poet, and furnished no little matter to Plato. He died at ninety, some say at ninety-seven, a longevity attributable to the moderation of his way of life, and the serenity of his temper. He says in one of his fragments:—
A darling and a grace is Peace of Mind;
She lives next door to Temperance.
Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse (the Elder). He wrote bad verses; slept in a bed with a trench round it and a drawbridge; and, for fear of a barber, burnt away his beard with hot walnut-shells. What a razor! Dionysius had abilities enough to become the more hateful for his capricious and detestable qualities. Probably he had a spice of madness in him, which power exasperated. Ariosto has turned him to fine account in his personification of Suspicion.
Damon and Pythias, the famous friends. One of them became surety to Dionysius for the other’s appearance at the scaffold, and was not disappointed. Dionysius begged to be admitted a third in the partnership!—the most ridiculous thing, perhaps, that even the tyrant ever did.
Damocles, the courtly gentleman, who pronounced Dionysius the happiest man on earth. He was treated by his master to a “proof of the pudding” which tyrants eat. He sat crowned at the head of a luxurious banquet, in the midst of odours, music, and homage; and saw, suspended by a hair over his head, a naked sword. This, it must be confessed, was a happy thought of the royal poet—a practical epigram of the very finest point.
Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse (the Younger), who, on his ejection from the throne, is said to have become a schoolmaster at Corinth; “in order,” says Cicero, “that he might still be a scourger somehow.”
Dion, his relation, and Timoleon of Corinth, the great but unhappy fratricide; both of whom advanced the liberties of Syracuse.
Plato; who visited both the Dionysiuses, to induce them to become philosophers! He might as well have asked tigers in a sheepfold to prefer a dish of green pease.
Agathocles the Potter, tyrant of the whole island; who piqued himself on outdoing the cruelties of Phalaris. His objection to the brazen bull was, that you could not see the face of the person tortured; so he invented a hollow iron man with an open visor, in order that he might contemplate the face of the occupant, while heating over a slow fire. But let us hope the story is not true; for, though things as horrible have taken place in the world, the wicked themselves have been calumniated.