Such was the contemptible force with which Dion ventured to attack the greatest of all Grecian potentates in his own stronghold and island. Dionysius had now reigned as despot at Syracuse between ten and eleven years. Inferior as he personally was to his father, it does not seem that the Syracusan power had yet materially declined in his hands. We know little about the political facts of his reign; but the veteran Philistus, his chief adviser and officer, appears to have kept together the larger part of the great means bequeathed by the elder Dionysius. The disparity of force, therefore, between the assailant and the party assailed, was altogether extravagant. To Dion, personally, indeed, such disparity was a matter of indifference. To a man of his enthusiastic temperament, so great was the heroism and sublimity of the enterprise,—combining liberation of his country from a despot, with revenge for gross outrages to himself,—that he was satisfied if he could only land in Sicily with no matter how small a force, accounting it honor enough to perish in such a cause.[175] Such was the emphatic language of Dion, reported to us by Aristotle; who (being then among the pupils of Plato) may probably have heard it with his own ears. To impartial contemporary spectators, like Demosthenes, the attempt seemed hopeless.[176] [175] Aristotel. Politic. v. 8, 17. [176] See Orat. adv. Leptinem, s. 179. p. 506: an oration delivered about two years afterwards; not long after the victory of Dion. Compare Diodor. xvi. 9; Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 2. But the intelligent men of the Academy who accompanied Dion, would not have thrown their lives away in contemplation of a glorious martyrdom; nor were either they or he ignorant, that there existed circumstances, not striking the eye of the ordinary spectator, which materially weakened the great apparent security of Dionysius.