The spies and police of the Dionysian dynasty not having been yet reëstablished, there was ample liberty at least of speech and censure; so that Dion was soon furnished with full indications of the sentiment entertained towards him. He became disquieted and irritable at this change of public feeling;[260] angry with the people, yet at the same time ashamed of himself. The murder of Herakleides sat heavy on his soul. The same man whom he had spared before when in the wrong, he had now slain when in the right. The maxims of the Academy which had imparted to him so much self-satisfaction in the former act, could hardly fail to occasion a proportionate sickness of self-reproach in the latter. Dion was not a mere power-seeker, nor prepared for all that endless apparatus of mistrustful precaution, indispensable to a Grecian despot. When told that his life was in danger, he replied that he would rather perish at once by the hands of the first assassin, than live in perpetual diffidence, towards friends as well as enemies.[261] [260] Cornelius Nepos, Dion. c. 7. “Insuetus male audiendi,” etc. [261] Plutarch, Dion, c. 56. Ἀλλ᾽ ὁ μὲν Δίων, ἐπὶ τοῖς κατὰ τὸν Ἡρακλείδην ἀχθόμενος, καὶ τὸν φόνον ἐκεῖνον, ὥς τινα τοῦ βίου καὶ τῶν πράξεων αὐτῷ κηλῖδα προκειμένην, δυσχεραίνων ἀεὶ καὶ βαρυνόμενος εἶπεν, ὅτι πολλάκις ἤδη θνήσκειν ἕτοιμός ἐστι καὶ παρέχειν τῷ βουλομένῳ σφάττειν αὐτὸν, εἰ ζῇν δεήσει μὴ μόνον τοὺς ἐχθροὺς ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς φίλους φυλαττόμενον. Compare Plutarch, Apophthegm. p. 176 F.