Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/462

440 HISTORY OF GREECE. part in their intrigues. This is too much. I am come home now to throw up my command. While my colleagues are corruptly bartering away their country, I am willing to take my share as a citizen in the common risk, but I cannot endure to incur shame as an accomplice in their treacher}'." Such bold allegations, scattered by Dionysius among the crowd pressing round him, renewed at length, with emphatic formality in the regular assembly held the next day, and concluding witi actual resignation, struck deep terror into the Syracusan mind. He spoke with authority, not merely as one fresh from the frontier exposed, but also as bearing the grateful testimonial of the Gelo- ans, echoed by the soldiers whose pay he had recently doubled. His assertion of the special message from Imilkon, probably an impudent falsehood, was confidently accepted and backed by all these men, as well as by his other partisans, the Hermokratean party, and most of all by the restored exiles. What defence the accused generals made, or tried to make, we are not told. It was not likely to prevail, nor did it prevail, against the positive depo- sition of a witness so powerfully seconded. The people, persuaded of their treason, were incensed against them, and trembled at the thought of being left, by the resignation of Dionysius, to the pro- tection of such treacherous guardians against the impending inva- sion. Now was the tune for his partisans to come forward with their main proposition : " Why not get rid of these traitors, and keep Dionysius alone ? Leave them to be tried and punished at a more convenient season ; but elect him at once general with full powers, to make head against the pressing emergency from with- out. Do not wait until the enemy is actually assaulting our walls. Dionysius is the man for our purpose, the only one with whom we have a chance of safety. Recollect that our glorious victory over the three hundred thousand Carthaginians at Himera was achieved by Gelon acting as general with full powers." Such rhetoric was irresistible in the present temper of the assembly, when the parti- sans of Dionysius were full of audacity and acclamation, when his opponents were discomfited, suspicious of each other, and with- out any positive scheme to propose, and when the storm, which had already overwhelmed Selinus, Himera, and Agrigentum, was about to burst on Gela and Syracuse. A vote of the assembly was