[406] Plutarch. Timoleon, c. 39. Ἐν τοιαύτῃ δὲ γηροτροφούμενος τιμῇ μετ᾽ εὐνοίας, ὥσπερ πατὴρ κοινὸς, ἐκ μικρᾶς προφάσεως τῷ χρόνῳ συνεφαψαμένης ἐτελεύτησεν. “The Syracusan people solemnize, at the cost of two hundred minæ, the funeral of this man, the Corinthian Timoleon, son of Timodemus. They have passed a vote to honor him for all future time with festival matches in music, horse and chariot race, and gymnastics,—because, after having put down the despots, subdued the foreign enemy, and re-colonized the greatest among the ruined cities, he restored to the Sicilian Greeks their constitution and laws.” A sepulchral monument, seemingly with this inscription recorded on it, was erected to the memory of Timoleon in the agora of Syracuse. To this monument other buildings were presently annexed; porticos, for the assembling of persons in business or conversation—and palæstræ, for the exercises of youths. The aggregate of buildings all taken together was called the Timoleontion.[407] [407] Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 39; Diodor, xvi. 90. When we reflect that the fatal battle of Chæroneia had taken place the year before Timoleon’s decease, and that his native city Corinth as well as all her neighbors were sinking deeper and deeper into the degradation of subject towns of Macedonia, we shall not regret, for his sake, that a timely death relieved him from so mournful a spectacle. It was owing to him that the Sicilian Greeks were rescued, for nearly one generation, from the like fate. He had the rare glory of maintaining to the end, and executing to the full, the promise of liberation with which he had gone forth from Corinth. His early years had been years of acute suffering—and that, too, incurred in the cause of freedom—arising out of the death of his brother; his later period, manifesting the like sense of duty under happier auspices, had richly repaid him, by successes overpassing all reasonable expectation, and by the ample flow of gratitude and attachment poured forth to him amidst the liberated Sicilians. His character appears most noble, and most instructive, if we contrast him with Dion. Timoleon had been brought up as the citizen of a free, though oligarchical community in Greece, surrounded by other free communities, and amidst universal hatred of despots. The politicians whom he had learnt to esteem were men trained in this school, maintaining a qualified ascendency against more or less of open competition from rivals, and obliged to look for the means of carrying their views apart from simple dictation. Moreover, the person whom Timoleon had selected for his peculiar model, was Epaminondas, the noblest model that Greece afforded.[408] It was to this example that Timoleon owed in part his energetic patriotism combined with freedom from personal ambition—his gentleness of political antipathy—and the perfect habits of conciliatory and popular dealing—which he manifested amidst so many new and trying scenes to the end of his career.