It appears that the second Dionysius, when he retired to Lokri after the first loss of his power at Syracuse, soon found his rule unacceptable and his person unpopular. He maintained himself, seemingly from the beginning, by means of two distinct citadels in the town, with a standing army under the command of the Spartan Pharax, a man of profligacy and violence.[286] The conduct of Dionysius became at last so odious, that nothing short of extreme force could keep down the resentment of the citizens. We read that he was in the habit of practising the most licentious outrage towards the marriageable maidens of good family in Lokri. The detestation thus raised against him was repressed by his superior force—not, we may be sure, without numerous cruelties perpetrated against individual persons who stood on their defence—until the moment arrived when he and his son Apollokrates effected their second return to Ortygia. To ensure so important an acquisition, Dionysius diminished his military force at Lokri, where he at the same time left his wife, his two daughters, and his youthful son. But after his departure, the Lokrians rose in insurrection, overpowered the reduced garrison, and took captive these unfortunate members of his family. Upon their guiltless heads fell all the terrors of retaliation for the enormities of the despot. It was in vain that both Dionysius himself, and the Tarentines[287] supplicated permission to redeem the captives at the highest ransom. In vain was Lokri besieged, and its territory desolated. The Lokrians could neither be seduced by bribes, nor deterred by threats, from satiating the full extremity of vindictive fury. After multiplied cruelties and brutalities, the wife and family of Dionysius were at length relieved from farther suffering by being strangled.[288] With this revolting tragedy terminated the inauspicious marital connection begun between the elder Dionysius and the oligarchy of Lokri. [286] Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 11; Compar. Timoleon and Paul. Emil. c. 2; Theopompus ap. Athenæ. xii. p. 536; Plutarch, Reipub. Gerend. Præcept. p. 821 D. About the two citadels in Lokri, see Livy, xxix. 6. It may have been probably a predatory fleet in the service of the younger Dionysius, which Livy mentions to have been ravaging about this time the coast of Latium, coöperating with the Gauls against portions of the Roman territory (Livy, vii. 25, 26). [287] It would appear that relations of amity, or amicable dependence, still subsisted between Dionysius the younger and the Tarentines. There was seen, in the prytaneum or government-house of Tarentum, a splendid chandelier with three hundred and sixty-five burners, a present from Dionysius (Euphorion, ap. Athenæum, xv. p. 700). [288] Strabo, vi. p. 259, 260; Athenæus, xii. p. 541.