It seems improbable that the conversation of Plato with Dion at Syracuse (which was continued sufficiently long to exercise a marked and permanent influence on the character of the latter), and his interviews with Dionysius, should have taken place while Dionysius was carrying on the Italian war or the siege of Rhegium. I think that the date of the interview must be placed after the capture of Rhegium in 387 B. C. And the expression of Plato (given in a letter written more than thirty years afterwards) about his own age, is not to be taken as excluding the supposition that he might have been forty-one or forty-two when he came to Syracuse. Athenæus (xi. p. 507) mentions the visit of Plato. [77] Plutarch, Dion. c. 5. [78] Plutarch, Dion, c. 5; Diodor. xv. 7; Diogen. Laert. iii. 17; Cornelius Nepos, Dion, c. 2. That Dionysius should listen to the discourse of Plato with repugnance, not less decided than that which the Emperor Napoleon was wont to show towards ideologists—was an event naturally to be expected. But that, not satisfied with dismissing the philosopher, he should seek to kill, maltreat, or disgrace him, illustrates forcibly the vindictive and irritable elements of his character, and shows how little he was likely to respect the lives of those who stood in his way as political opponents. Dionysius was at the same time occupied with new constructions, military, civil, and religious, at Syracuse. He enlarged the fortifications of the city by adding a new line of wall, extending along the southern cliff of Epipolæ, from Euryalus to the suburb called Neapolis; which suburb was now, it would appear, surrounded by a separate wall of its own—or perhaps may have been so surrounded a few years earlier, though we know that it was unfortified and open during the attack of Imilkon in 396 B. C.[79] At the time, probably, the fort at the Euryalus was enlarged and completed to the point of grandeur which its present remains indicate. The whole slope of Epipolæ became thus bordered and protected by fortifications, from its base at Achradina to its apex at Euryalus. And Syracuse now comprised five separately fortified portions,—Epipolæ, Neapolis, Tychê, Achradina, and Ortygia; each portion having its own fortification, though the four first were included within the same outer walls. Syracuse thus became the largest fortified city in all Greece; larger even than Athens in its then existing state, though not so large as Athens had been during the Peloponnesian war, while the Phaleric wall was yet standing. [79] Diodor. xiv. 6.3. It was in the construction of these extensive fortifications, seemingly, that Dionysius demolished the chapel which had been erected by the Syracusans in honor of Dioklês (Diodor. xiii. 635).