XLIII. After they had ceased speaking, there was a great silence; and when Dion rose and began to speak, tears choked his utterance. The Peloponnesians encouraged him, and showed sympathy with him, and at length he mastered his emotion and said: "Men of Peloponnesus and Allies, I have assembled you here to deliberate about your own affairs. As for myself, I cannot with honour deliberate while Syracuse is being destroyed, but if I cannot save my country, I will share her ruin and make her flames my own funeral pyre. As for you, if you can bring yourselves even now, after all that has passed, to help us, the most ill-advised and the most ill-fated of men, restore again by your own means alone the city of Syracuse. But if you hate the Syracusans and reject their appeal, then may you be rewarded by heaven for your former brave conduct and loyalty to me, and may you remember Dion, who would not desert you when you were wronged, and would not afterwards desert his fellow-countrymen when they were in trouble." While Dion was still speaking, the Peloponnesians leaped up with a shout, bidding him lead them as quickly as possible to the rescue, and the ambassadors from Syracuse embraced him, calling upon heaven to bless both him and the troops. When order was restored, Dion immediately began to prepare for the march, and ordered his men to go and eat their dinners at once, and then to assemble under arms in that very place; for he intended to march to Syracuse by night. XLIV. Meanwhile at Syracuse the generals of Dionysius worked great ruin in the city while it was day, but when darkness came on retired into the citadel, having lost but few men. The popular leaders now took courage, and, expecting that the enemy would attempt nothing further, again called upon the people to have nothing to do with Dion, and, if he came with his foreign troops, not to admit him into the city and own themselves inferior to his men in courage, but to reconquer their city and their liberty by their own exertions. More embassies were now sent to Dion, from the generals dissuading him from coming, and from the knights and leading citizens entreating him to come quickly. This caused him to march more slowly, yet with greater determination. When day broke, the party opposed to Dion occupied the gates, in order to shut him out of the city, while Nypsius a second time led out the mercenaries from the citadel, in greater numbers and far more confident than before. He at once levelled to the ground the whole of the works by which the citadel was cut off from the main land, and overran and pillaged the city. No longer men alone, but even women and children were slaughtered, and property of every kind mercilessly destroyed; for Dionysius, who now despaired of ultimate success, and bitterly hated the Syracusans, wished only, as it were, to bury the monarchy in the ruins of the city. In order to effect their purpose before Dion could come to the rescue, the