First, there was the pronounced and almost unanimous discontent of the people of Syracuse. Though prohibited from all public manifestations, they had been greatly agitated by the original project of Dion to grant liberty to the city—by the inclinations even of Dionysius himself towards the same end, so soon unhappily extinguished—by the dissembling language of Dionysius, the great position of Dion’s wife and sister, and the second coming of Plato, all of which favored the hope that Dion might be amicably recalled. At length such chance disappeared, when his property was confiscated and his wife re-married to another. But as his energetic character was well known, the Syracusans now both confidently expected, and ardently wished, that he would return by force, and help them to put down one who was alike his enemy and theirs. Speusippus, having accompanied Plato to Syracuse and mingled much with the people, brought back decisive testimonies of their disaffection towards Dionysius, and of their eager longing for relief by the hands of Dion. It would be sufficient (they said) if he even came alone; they would flock around him, and arm him at once with an adequate force.[177] [177] Plutarch, Dion, c. 22. Speusippus, from Athens, corresponded both with Dion and with Dionysius at Syracuse; at least there was a correspondence between them, read as genuine by Diogenes Laertius (iv. 1, 2, 5). There were doubtless many other messages of similar tenor sent to Peloponnesus; and one Syracusan exile, Herakleides, was in himself a considerable force. Though a friend of Dion,[178] he had continued high in the service of Dionysius, until the second visit of Plato. At that time he was disgraced, and obliged to save his life by flight, on account of a mutiny among the mercenary troops, or rather of the veteran soldiers among them, whose pay Dionysius had cut down. The men so curtailed rose in arms, demanding continuance of the old pay; and when Dionysius shut the gates of the acropolis, refusing attention to their requisitions, they raised the furious barbaric pæan or war shout, and rushed up to scale the walls.[179] Terrible were the voices of these Gauls, Iberians, and Campanians, in the ears of Plato, who knew himself to be the object of their hatred, and who happened to be then in the garden of the acropolis. But Dionysius, no less terrified than Plato, appeased the mutiny, by conceding all that was asked, and even more. The blame of this misadventure was thrown upon Herakleides, towards whom Dionysius conducted himself with mingled injustice and treachery—according to the judgment both of Plato and of all around him.[180] As an exile, he brought word that Dionysius could not even rely upon the mercenary troops, whom he treated with a parsimony the more revolting as they contrasted it with the munificence of his father.[181] Herakleides was eager to coöperate in putting down the despotism at Syracuse. But he waited