Timoleon lived to see his great work of Sicilian enfranchisement consummated, to carry it through all its incipient difficulties, and to see it prosperously moving on. Not Syracuse alone, but the other Grecian cities in the island also, enjoyed under their revived free institutions a state of security, comfort, and affluence, to which they had been long strangers. The lands became again industriously tilled; the fertile soil yielded anew abundant exports; the temples were restored from their previous decay, and adorned with the votive offerings of pious munificence.[405] The same state of prosperous and active freedom, which had followed on the expulsion of the Gelonian dynasty a hundred and twenty years before, and lasted about fifty years, without either despots within or invaders from without—was now again made prevalent throughout Sicily under the auspices of Timoleon. It did not indeed last so long. It was broken up in the year 316 B. C., twenty-four years after the battle of the Krimêsus, by the despot Agathokles, whose father was among the immigrants to Syracuse under the settlement of Timoleon. But the interval of security and freedom with which Sicily was blessed between these two epochs, she owed to the generous patriotism and intelligent counsel of Timoleon. There are few other names among the Grecian annals, with which we can connect so large an amount of predetermined and beneficent result. [405] Diodor. xvi. 83. Endeared to the Syracusans as a common father and benefactor,[406] and exhibited as their hero to all visitors from Greece, he passed the remainder of his life amidst the fulness of affectionate honor. Unfortunately for the Syracusans, that remainder was but too short; for he died of an illness apparently slight, in the year 337-336 B. C.—three or four years after the battle of the Krimêsus. Profound and unfeigned was the sorrow which his death excited, universally, throughout Sicily. Not merely the Syracusans, but crowds from all other parts of the island, attended to do honor to his funeral, which was splendidly celebrated at the public cost. Some of the chosen youths of the city carried the bier whereon his body was deposited: a countless procession of men and women followed, in their festival attire, crowned with wreaths, and mingling with their tears admiration and envy for their departed liberator. The procession was made to pass over that ground which presented the most honorable memento of Timoleon; where the demolished Dionysian stronghold had once reared its head, and where the court of justice was now placed, at the entrance of Ortygia. At length it reached the Nekropolis, between Ortygia and Achradina, where a massive funeral pile had been prepared. As soon as the bier had been placed on this pile, and fire was about to be applied, the herald Demetrius, distinguished for the powers of his voice, proclaimed with loud announcement as follows:—