As the stimulus from the teacher was here put forth with consummate efficacy, so the predisposition of the learner enabled it to take full effect. Dion became an altered man both in public sentiment and in individual behavior. He recollected that twenty years before, his country Syracuse had been as free as Athens. He learnt to abhor the iniquity of the despotism by which her liberty had been overthrown, and by which subsequently the liberties of so many other Greeks in Italy and Sicily had been trodden down also. He was made to remark, that Sicily had been half-barbarized through the foreign mercenaries imported as the despot’s instruments. He conceived the sublime idea or dream of rectifying all this accumulation of wrong and suffering. It was his wish first to cleanse Syracuse from the blot of slavery, and to clothe her anew in the brightness and dignity of freedom; yet not with the view of restoring the popular government as it had stood prior to the usurpation, but of establishing an improved constitutional policy, originated by himself, with laws which should not only secure individual rights, but also educate and moralize the citizens.[120] The function which he imagined to himself, and which the conversation of Plato suggested, was not that of a despot like Dionysius, but that of a despotic legislator like Lykurgus,[121] taking advantage of a momentary omnipotence, conferred upon him by grateful citizens in a state of public confusion, to originate a good system; which, when once put in motion, would keep itself alive by fashioning the minds of the citizens to its own intrinsic excellence. After having thus both liberated and reformed Syracuse, Dion promised to himself that he would employ Syracusan force, not in annihilating, but in recreating, other free Hellenic communities throughout the island; expelling from thence all the barbarians—both the imported mercenaries and the Carthaginians. [120] Plato, Epistol. vii. p. 335 F. Δίωνα γὰρ ἐγὼ σαφῶς οἶδα, ὡς οἷόν τε περὶ ἀνθρώπων ἄνθρωπον διϊσχυρίζεσθαι, ὅτι τὴν ἀρχὴν εἰ κατέσχεν, ὡς οὐκ ἄν ποτε ἐπ᾽ ἄλλο γε σχῆμα τῆς ἀρχῆς ἐτράπετο, ἢ ἐπὶ τὸ—Συρακούσας μὲν πρῶτον, τὴν πατρίδα τὴν ἑαυτοῦ, ἐπεὶ τὴν δουλείαν αὐτῆς ἀπήλλαξε καὶ φαιδρύνας ἐλευθερίῳ ἐν σχήματι κατέστησε, τὸ μετὰ τοῦτ᾽ ἂν πάσῃ μηχάνῃ ἐκόσμησε νόμοις τοῖς προσήκουσί τε καὶ ἀρίστοις τοὺς πολίτας—τό τε ἐφεξῆς τούτοις προυθυμεῖτ᾽ ἂν πρᾶξαι, πᾶσαν Σικελίαν κατοικίζειν καὶ ἐλευθέραν ἀπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων ποιεῖν, τοὺς μὲν ἐκβάλλων, τοὺς δὲ χειρούμενος ῥᾷον Ἱέρωνος, etc. Compare the beginning of the same epistle, p. 324 A. [121] Plato, Epist. iv. p. 320 F. (addressed to Dion). ... ὡς οὖν ὑπὸ πάντων ὁρώμενος παρασκευάζου τόν τε Λυκοῦργον ἐκεῖνον ἀρχαῖον ἀποδείξων, καὶ τὸν Κῦρον καὶ εἴτις ἄλλος πώποτε ἔδοξεν ἤθει καὶ πολιτείᾳ διενεγκεῖν, etc.