as destroying the Carthaginians both in Sicily and in Africa, but leaving the Syracusans untouched. Twice did it arrest the progress of Imilkon, when in the full career of victory; once, after the capture of Gela and Kamarina—a second time, when, after his great naval victory off Katana, he had brought his numerous host under the walls of Syracuse, and was actually master of the open suburb of Achradina. On both these occasions the pestilence made a complete revolution in the face of the war; exalting Dionysius from impending ruin, to assured safety in the one, and to unmeasured triumph in the other. We are bound to allow for this good fortune (the like of which never befel Agathokles), when we contemplate the long prosperity of Dionysius[96], and when we adopt, as in justice we must, the panegyric of Scipio Africanus. [93] Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 15. [94] Polyb. xv. 35. Διὸ καὶ Πόπλιον Σκιπίωνά φασι, τὸν πρῶτον καταπολεμήσαντα Καρχηδονίους, ἐρωτηθέντα, τίνας ὑπολαμβάνει πραγματικωτάτους ἄνδρας γεγονέναι καὶ σὺν νῷ τολμηροτάτους, εἰπεῖν, τοὺς περὶ Ἀγαθοκλέα καὶ Διονύσιον τοὺς Σικελιώτας. [95] Plutarch, Dion, c. 7. [96] The example of Dionysius—his long career of success and quiet death—is among those cited by Cotta in Cicero (De Nat. Deor. iii. 33, 81, 85) to refute the doctrine of Balbus, as to the providence of the gods and their moral government over human affairs. The preceding chapter has detailed the means whereby Dionysius attained his prize, and kept it: those employed by Agathokles—analogous in spirit but of still darker coloring in the details—will appear hereafter. That Hermokrates—who had filled with credit the highest offices in the state and whom men had acquired the habit of following—should aspire to become despot, was no unusual phenomenon in Grecian politics; but that Dionysius should aim at mounting the same ladder, seemed absurd or even insane—to use the phrase of Isokrates.[97] If, then, in spite of such disadvantage he succeeded in fastening round his countrymen, accustomed to a free constitution as their birth-right, those “adamantine chains” which they were well known to abhor—we may be sure that his plan of proceeding must have been dexterously chosen, and prosecuted with consummate perseverance and audacity; but we may be also sure that it was nefarious in the extreme. The machinery of fraud whereby the people were to be cheated into a temporary submission, as a prelude to the machinery of force whereby such submission was to be perpetuated against their consent—was the stock in trade of Grecian usurpers. But seldom does it appear prefaced by more impudent calumnies, or worked out with a larger measure of violence and spoliation, than in the case of Dionysius. He was indeed powerfully seconded at the outset by the danger of Syracuse from the Carthaginian arms. But his scheme of usurpation, far from diminishing such danger, tended materially to increase it, by disuniting the