Such is the impressive and picturesque description given (doubtless by Athanis or some other eye-witness[402]) of the relations between the Syracusan people and the blind Timoleon, after his power had been abdicated, and when there remained to him nothing except his character and moral ascendency. It is easy to see that the solemnities of interposition, here recounted, must have been reserved for those cases in which the assembly had been disturbed by some unusual violence or collision of parties. For such critical junctures, where numbers were perhaps nearly balanced, and where the disappointment of an angry minority threatened to beget some permanent feud, the benefit was inestimable, of an umpire whom both parties revered, and before whom neither thought it a dishonor to yield. Keeping aloof from the details and embarrassments of daily political life, and preserving himself (like the Salaminian trireme, to use a phrase which Plutarch applies to Perikles at Athens) for occasions at once momentous and difficult, Timoleon filled up a gap occasionally dangerous to all free societies; but which even at Athens had always remained a gap, because there was no Athenian at once actually worthy, and known to be worthy, to fill it. We may even wonder how he continued worthy, when the intense popular sentiment in his favor tended so strongly to turn his head, and when no contradiction or censure against him was tolerated. [402] It occurs in Cornelius Nepos prior to Plutarch, and was probably copied by both from the same authority. Two persons, Laphystius and Demænetus, called by the obnoxious names of sycophants and demagogues, were bold enough to try the experiment. The former required him to give bail in a lawsuit; the latter, in a public discourse, censured various parts of his military campaigns. The public indignation against both these men was vehement; yet there can be little doubt that Laphystius applied to Timoleon a legal process applicable universally to every citizen: what may have been the pertinence of the censures of Demænetus, we are unable to say. However, Timoleon availed himself of the well-meant impatience of the people to protect him either from legal process or from censure, only to administer to them a serious and valuable lesson. Protesting against all interruption to the legal process of Laphystius, he proclaimed emphatically that this was the precise purpose for which he had so long labored, and combated—in order that every Syracusan citizen might be enabled to appeal to the laws and exercise freely his legal rights. And while he thought it unnecessary to rebut in detail the objections taken against his previous generalship, he publicly declared his gratitude to the gods, for having granted his prayer that he might witness all Syracusans in possession of full liberty of speech.[403] [403] Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 37; Cornelius Nepos, Timoleon, c. 5.