It is by no means certain, indeed, that such schemes could have been successfully realized, even with full sincerity on the part of Dionysius, and the energy of Dion besides. With all governments, to do evil is easy—to effect beneficial change, difficult; and with a Grecian despot, this was true in a peculiar manner. Those great mercenary forces and other instruments, which had been strong as adamant for the oppressive rule of the elder Dionysius would have been found hardly manageable, perhaps even obstructive, if his son had tried to employ them for more liberal purposes. But still the experiment would have been tried, with a fair chance of success—if only Plato, during his short-lived spiritual authority at Syracuse, had measured more accurately the practical influence which a philosopher might reasonably hope to exercise over Dionysius. I make these remarks upon him with sincere regret; but I am much mistaken if he did not afterwards hear them in more poignant language from the banished Dion, upon whom the consequences of the mistake mainly fell. Speedily did the atmosphere at Syracuse become overclouded. The conservative party—friends of the old despotism, with the veteran Philistus at their head—played their game far better than that of the reformers was played by Plato, or by Dion since the arrival of Plato. Philistus saw that Dion, as the man of strong patriotic impulses and of energetic execution, was the real enemy to be aimed at. He left no effort untried to calumniate Dion, and to set Dionysius against him. Whispers and misrepresentations from a thousand different quarters beset the ear of Dionysius, alarming him with the idea that Dion was usurping to himself the real authority in Syracuse, with the view of ultimately handing it over to the children of Aristomachê, and of reigning in their name. Plato had been brought thither (it was said) as an agent in the conspiracy, for the purpose of winning over Dionysius into idle speculations, enervating his active vigor, and ultimately setting him aside; in order that all serious political agency might fall into the hands of Dion.[155] These hostile intrigues were no secret to Plato himself, who, even shortly after his arrival, began to see evidence of their poisonous activity. He tried sincerely to counterwork them;[156] but unfortunately the language which he himself addressed to Dionysius was exactly such as to give them the best chance of success. When Dionysius recounted to Philistus or other courtiers, how Plato and Dion had humiliated him in his own eyes, and told him that he was unworthy to govern until he had undergone a thorough purification—he would be exhorted to resent it as presumption and insult; and would be assured that it could only arise from a design to dispossess him of his authority, in favor of Dion, or perhaps of the children of Aristomachê with Dion as regent.