the usual admiration, not because there were rivals on the ground equal or superior, but simply because it came from _him_; that its very magnificence had operated to render the explosion of antipathy against him louder and more violent; that his tents in the sacred ground had been actually assailed, and that access to sacrifice, as well as to the matches, had been secured to him only by the interposition of authority. We learn indeed that his chariots failed in the field by unlucky accidents; but in the existing temper of the crowd, these very accidents would be seized as occasions for derisory cheering against him. To this we must add explosions of hatred, yet more furious, elicited by his poems, putting the reciters to utter shame. At the moment when Dionysius expected to hear the account of an unparalleled triumph, he is thus informed, not merely of disappointment, but of insults to himself, direct and personal, the most poignant ever offered by Greeks to a Greek, amidst the holiest and most frequented ceremony of the Hellenic world.[75] Never in any other case do we read of public antipathy, against an individual, being carried to the pitch of desecrating by violence the majesty of the Olympic festival. [72] In a former chapter of this History (Vol. X. Ch. LXXVII. p. 75), I have already shown grounds, derived from the circumstances of Central Greece and Persia, for referring the discourse of Lysias, just noticed, to Olympiad 99 or 384 B. C. I here add certain additional reasons, derived from what is said about Dionysius, towards the same conclusion. In xiv. 109, Diodorus describes the events of 388 B. C., the year of Olympiad 98, during which Dionysius was still engaged in war in Italy, besieging Rhegium. He says that Dionysius made unparalleled efforts to send a great display to this festival; a splendid legation, with richly decorated tents, several fine chariots-and-four, and poems to be recited by the best actors. He states that Lysias the orator delivered a strong invective against him, exciting those who heard it to exclude the Syracusan despot from sacrificing, and to plunder the rich tents. He then details how the purposes of Dionysius failed miserably on every point; the fine tents were assailed, the chariots all ran wrong or were broken, the poems were hissed, the ships returning to Syracuse were wrecked, etc. Yet in spite of this accumulation of misfortunes (he tells us) Dionysius was completely soothed by his flatterers (who told him that such envy always followed upon greatness), and did not desist from poetical efforts.