XLVIII. After expressing himself thus, Dion released Herakleides. He next turned his attention to the fortification by which the citadel was cut off, and ordered each Syracusan to cut a stake and bring it to the spot. He allowed the citizens to rest during the night, but kept his mercenary soldiers at work, and by the next morning had completed the palisade, so that both the enemy and his own countrymen were astonished at the speed with which he had accomplished so great a work. He now buried the corpses of those citizens who had fallen in the battle, ransomed the prisoners, who amounted to no less than two thousand, and summoned an assembly, in which Herakleides proposed that Dion should be appointed absolute commander by land and by sea. All the better citizens approved of this, and wished it to be put to the vote, but it was thrown out by the interference of the mob of sailors and people of the lower classes, who were sorry that Herakleides had lost his post as admiral, and who thought that, although he might be worthless in all other respects, he was at any rate more of a friend to the people than Dion, and more easily managed by them. Dion conceded so much to them as to give Herakleides command of the fleet, but vexed them much by opposing their plans for a redistribution of land and houses, and by declaring void all that they had decided upon this subject. In consequence of this Herakleides, who at once entered upon his office of admiral, sailed to Messenia, and there by his harangues excited the sailors and soldiers under his command to mutiny against Dion, who, he declared, intended to make himself despot of Syracuse; while he, in the meanwhile, entered upon negotiations with Dionysius by means of the Spartan Pharax. When this was discovered by the Syracusan nobility, a violent quarrel arose in his camp, which led to the people of Syracuse being reduced to great want and scarcity, so that Dion was at his wit's end, and was bitterly reproached by his friends for having placed such an unmanageable and villainous rival as Herakleides in possession of power which he used against his benefactor.