The Elder Dionysius, at the moment of his death, boasted of having left his dominion “fastened by chains of adamant;” that is, sustained by a large body of mercenaries,[111] well trained and well paid—by impregnable fortifications on the islet of Ortygia—by four hundred ships of war—by immense magazines of arms and military stores—and by established intimidation over the minds of the Syracusans. These were really “chains of adamant”—so long as there was a man like Dionysius to keep them in hand. But he left no successor competent to the task; nor indeed an unobstructed succession. He had issue by two wives, whom he had married both at the same time, as has been already mentioned. By the Lokrian wife, Doris, he had his eldest son named Dionysius, and two others; by the Syracusan wife Aristomachê, daughter of Hipparinus, he had two sons, Hipparinus and Nysæus—and two daughters, Sophrosynê and Aretê.[112] Dionysius the younger can hardly have been less than twenty-five years old at the death of his father and namesake. Hipparinus, the eldest son by the other wife, was considerably younger. Aristomachê his mother had long remained childless; a fact which the elder Dionysius ascribed to incantations wrought by the mother of the Lokrian wife, and punished by putting to death the supposed sorceress.[113] [111] Both Diodorus (xvi. 9) and Cornelius Nepos (Dion, c. 5) speak of one hundred thousand foot and ten thousand horse. The former speaks of four hundred ships of war; the latter of five hundred. The numbers of foot and horse appear evidently exaggerated. Both authors must have copied from the same original; possibly Ephorus. [112] Plutarch, Dion, c. 6; Theopompus, Fr. 204, ed. Didot. ap. Athenæum, x. p. 435; Diodor. xvi. 6; Cornel. Nepos (Dion, c. 1). The Scholiast on Plato’s fourth Epistle gives information respecting the personal relations and marriages of the elder Dionysius, not wholly agreeing with what is stated in the sixth chapter of Plutarch’s Life of Dion. [113] Plutarch, Dion, c. 3. The age of the younger Dionysius is nowhere positively specified. But in the year 356 B. C.—or 355 B. C., at the latest—he had a son, Apollokratês, old enough to be entrusted with the command of Ortygia, when he himself evacuated it for the first time (Plutarch, Dion, c. 37). We cannot suppose Apollokratês to have been less than sixteen years of age at the moment when he was entrusted with such a function, having his mother and sisters under his charge (c. 50). Apollokratês therefore must have been born at least as early as 372 B. C.; perhaps even earlier. Suppose Dionysius the younger to have been twenty years of age when Apollokratês was born; he would thus be in his twenty-fifth year in the beginning of 367 B. C., when Dionysius the elder died. The expressions of Plato, as to the youth of Dionysius the younger at that juncture, are not unsuitable to such an age.