We obtain little from the biographers of Timoleon, except a few incidents, striking, impressive, and somewhat theatrical, like those just recounted. But what is really important is, the tone and temper which these incidents reveal, both in Timoleon and in the Syracusan people. To see him unperverted by a career of superhuman success, retaining the same hearty convictions with which he had started from Corinth; renouncing power, the most ardent of all aspirations with a Greek politician, and descending to a private station, in spite of every external inducement to the contrary; resisting the temptation to impose his own will upon the people, and respecting their free speech and public vote in a manner which made it imperatively necessary for every one else to follow his example; foregoing command, and contenting himself with advice when his opinion was asked—all this presents a model of genuine and intelligent public spirit, such as is associated with few other names except that of Timoleon. That the Syracusan people should have yielded to such conduct and obedience not merely voluntary, but heartfelt and almost reverential, is no matter of wonder. And we may be quite sure that the opinion of Timoleon, tranquilly and unostentatiously consulted, was the guiding star which they followed on most points of moment or difficulty; over and above those of exceptional cases of aggravated dissent where he was called in with such imposing ceremony as an umpire. On the value of such an oracle close at hand it is needless to insist; especially in a city which for the last half century had known nothing but the dominion of force, and amidst a new miscellaneous aggregate composed of Greek settlers from many different quarters. Timoleon now enjoyed, as he had amply earned, what Xenophon calls “that good, not human, but divine—command over willing men—given manifestly to persons of genuine and highly trained temperance of character.[404]” In him the condition indicated by Xenophon was found completely realized—temperance in the largest and most comprehensive sense of the word—not simply sobriety and continence (which had belonged to the elder Dionysius also), but an absence of that fatal thirst for coercive power at all price, which in Greece was the fruitful parent of the greater crimes and enormities. [404] Xenoph. Œconomic. xxi. 12. Οὐ γὰρ πάνυ μοι δοκεῖ ὅλον τουτὶ τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἀνθρώπινον εἶναι, ἀλλὰ θεῖον, ~τὸ ἐθελόντων ἄρχειν~· σαφῶς δὲ δίδοται τοῖς ἀληθινῶς σωφροσύνῃ τετελεσμένοις. Τὸ δὲ ἀκόντων τυραννεῖν διδόασιν, ὡς ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ, οὓς ἂν ἡγῶνται ἀξίους εἶναι βιοτεύειν, ὥσπερ ὁ Τάνταλος ἐν ᾅδου λέγεται τὸν ἀεὶ χρόνον διατρίβειν, φοβούμενος μὴ δὶς ἀποθάνῃ.