Letters

What, then, do I mean by saying that my arrival in Sicily on that occasion was the foundation of everything? When I associated with Dion, who was then a youth, instructing him verbally in what I believed was best for mankind and counselling him to realize it in action, it seems that I was not aware that I was, in a way, unwittingly contriving the future overthrow of the tyranny. For Dion in truth, being quick-witted, both in other respects and in grasping the arguments I then put forward, hearkened to me with a keenness and ardor that I have never yet found in any of the youth whom I have met; and he determined to live the rest of his life in a different manner from the majority of the Italians and Sicilians, counting virtue worthy of more devotion than pleasure and all other kinds of luxury. In consequence, his way of life was in ill-odor with those who were conforming to the customary practices of the tyranny, until the death of Dionysius occurred. After this event, he came to the belief that this belief, which he himself had acquired through right instruction, would not always be confined to himself; and in fact he saw it being implanted in others also— not in many, it is true, but yet implanted in some; and of these he thought that Dionysius (with Heaven’s help) might become one, and that, if he did become a man of this mind, both his own life and that of all the rest of the Syracusans would, in consequence, be a life of immeasurable felicity. Moreover, Dion considered that I ought, by all means, to come to Syracuse with all speed to be his partner in this task, since he bore in mind our intercourse with one another and how happily it had wrought on him to acquire a longing for the noblest and best life; and if now, in like manner, he could effect this result in Dionysius, as he was trying to do, he had great hopes of establishing the blissful and true life throughout all the land without massacres and murders and the evils which have now come about. Holding these right views, Dion persuaded Dionysius to summon me; and he himself also sent a request that I should by all means come with all speed, before that any others should encounter Dionysius and turn him aside to some way of life other than the best. And these were the terms—long though they are to repeat—in which his request was couched: What opportunities (he asked) are we to wait for that could be better than those that have now been presented by a stroke of divine good fortune?