Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/152

126 HISTORY OF GREECE. not shock Hellenic instincts, sl.ould reach farther than political in* stitutions generally aim to do, so as to remodel the sentiments and habits of the citizens, on principles suited to philosophers like Plate. Brought up as Dion was from childhood at the court of the elder Dionysius, unused to that established legality, free speech, and habit of active citizenship, from whence a large por- tion of Hellenic virtue flowed the wonder is how he acquired so much public conviction and true magnanimity of soul not how he missed acquiring more. The influence of Plato during his youth stamped his mature character; but that influence (as Plato himself tells us) found a rare predisposition in the pupil. Still, Dion had no experience of the working of a free and popular government. The atmosphere in which his youth was passed was that of an energetic despotism ; while the aspiration which he imbibed from Plato was, to restrain and regularize that despot- ism, and to administer to the people a certain dose of political liberty, yet reserving to himself the task of settling how much was good for them, and the power of preventing them from ac quiring more. How this project the natural growth of Dion's mind, for which his tastes and capacities were suited was violently thrust aside through the alienated feelings of the younger Dionysius has been already recounted. The position of Dion was now com- pletely altered. He became a banished, ill-used man, stung with contemptuous antipathy against Dionysius, and eager to put down his despotism over Syracuse. Here were new motives apparently falling in with the old project. But the conditions of the prob- lem had altogether changed. Dion could not overthrow Diony- sius without " taking the Syracusan people into partnership " (to use the phrase of Herodotus l respecting the Athenian Kleisthe- nes) without promising them full freedom, as an induce- ment for their hearty cooperation without giving them arms, and awakening in them the stirring impulses of Grecian citizen- ship, all the more violent because they had been so long trodden down. 2 With these new allies he knew not how to deal. Ho had 1 Herodotus, v. 66. taaov^tEvo^ S 1 6 Kx.etm9evi?f rhv (%/ov rot. 2 Cicero do Officiis, ii. * ' Aci lores morsus intermissse libertatis quant rctentaB."