Dionysius II. (or the younger), then about twenty-five years of age, was a young man of considerable natural capacity, and of quick and lively impulses;[129] but weak and vain in his character, given to transitory caprices, and eager in his appetite for praise without being capable of any industrious or resolute efforts to earn it. As yet he was wholly unpractised in serious business of any kind. He had neither seen military service nor mingled in the discussion of political measures; having been studiously kept back from both, by the extreme jealousy of his father. His life had been passed in the palace or acropolis of Ortygia, amidst all the indulgences and luxuries belonging to a princely station, diversified with amateur carpenter’s work and turnery. However, the tastes of the father introduced among the guests at the palace a certain number of poets, reciters, musicians, etc., so that the younger Dionysius had contracted a relish for poetical literature, which opened his mind to generous sentiments, and large conceptions of excellence, more than any portion of his very confined experience. To philosophy, to instructive conversation, to the exercise of reason, he was a stranger.[130] But the very feebleness and indecision of his character presented him as impressible, perhaps improvable, by a strong will and influence brought to bear upon him from that quarter, at least as well as from any other. [129] Plato, Epistol. vii. p. 338 E. Ὁ δὲ οὔτε ἄλλως ἐστὶν ἀφυὴς πρὸς τὴν τοῦ μανθάνειν δύναμιν, φιλότιμος δὲ θαυμαστῶς, etc. Compare p. 330 A. p. 328 B.; also Epist. iii. p. 316 C. p. 317 E. Plutarch, Dion, c. 7-9. [130] Plato, Epistol. vii. p. 332 E. ἐπειδὴ τὰ παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτῷ συνεβεβήκει οὕτως ἀνομιλήτῳ μὲν παιδείας, ἀνομιλήτῳ δὲ συνουσιῶν τῶν προσηκουσῶν γεγονέναι, etc.