The assassination of Dion, as recounted in my last chapter, appears to have been skilfully planned and executed for the purpose of its contriver, the Athenian Kallippus. Succeeding at once to the command of the soldiers, among whom he had before been very popular,—and to the mastery of Ortygia,—he was practically supreme at Syracuse. We read in Cornelius Nepos, that after the assassination of Dion there was deep public sorrow, and a strong reaction in his favor, testified by splendid obsequies attended by the mass of the population.[269] But this statement is difficult to believe; not merely because Kallippus long remained undisturbed master, but because he also threw into prison the female relatives of Dion—his sister Aristomachê and his pregnant wife Aretê, avenging by such act of malignity the false oath which he had so lately been compelled to take, in order to satisfy their suspicions.[270] Aretê was delivered of a son in the prison. It would seem that these unhappy women were kept in confinement during all the time, more than a year, that Kallippus remained master. On his being deposed, they were released; when a Syracusan named Hiketas, a friend of the deceased Dion, affected to take them under his protection. After a short period of kind treatment, he put them on board a vessel to be sent to Peloponnesus, but caused them to be slain on the voyage, and their bodies to be sunk in the sea. To this cruel deed he is said to have been instigated by the enemies of Dion; and the act shows but too plainly how implacable those enemies were.[271] [269] Cornelius Nepos, Dion, c. 10. [270] Plutarch, Dion, c. 56, 57. [271] Plutarch, Dion, c. 58. How Kallippus maintained himself in Syracuse—by what support, or violences, or promises—and against what difficulties he had to contend—we are not permitted to know. He seems at first to have made promises of restoring liberty; and we are even told, that he addressed a public letter to his country, the city of Athens;[272] wherein he doubtless laid claim to the honors of tyrannicide; representing himself as the liberator of Syracuse. How this was received by the Athenian assembly, we are not informed. But to Plato and the frequenters of the Academy, the news of Dion’s death occasioned the most profound sorrow, as may still be read in the philosopher’s letters. [272] Plutarch, Dion, c. 58.