Thus perished Dion, having lived only about a year after his expulsion of the Dionysian dynasty from Syracuse—but a year too long for his own fame. Notwithstanding the events of those last months, there is no doubt that he was a man essentially differing from the class of Grecian despots: a man, not of aspirations purely personal, nor thirsting merely for multitudes of submissive subjects and a victorious army—but with large public-minded purposes attached as coördinate to his own ambitious views. He wished to perpetuate his name as the founder of a polity, cast in something of the general features of Sparta; which, while it did not shock Hellenic instincts, should reach farther than political institutions generally aim to do, so as to remodel the sentiments and habits of the citizens, on principles suited to philosophers like Plato. Brought up as Dion was from childhood at the court of the elder Dionysius, unused to that established legality, free speech, and habit of active citizenship, from whence a large portion of Hellenic virtue flowed—the wonder is how he acquired so much public conviction and true magnanimity of soul—not how he missed acquiring more. The influence of Plato during his youth stamped his mature character; but that influence (as Plato himself tells us) found a rare predisposition in the pupil. Still, Dion had no experience of the working of a free and popular government. The atmosphere in which his youth was passed was that of an energetic despotism; while the aspiration which he imbibed from Plato was, to restrain and regularize that despotism, and to administer to the people a certain dose of political liberty, yet reserving to himself the task of settling how much was good for them, and the power of preventing them from acquiring more.