Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/180

154 HISTORY OF GREECE. yet on the whole his conduct seems to have had more dignity that could have been expected. His literary tastes, manifested during the time of his intercourse with Plato, are implied even in the anecdotes intended to disparage him. Thus he is said to have opened a school for teaching boys to read, and to have instructed the public singers in the art of singing or reciting poetry.* His name served to subsequent writers, both Greek and Roman, as those of Croesus, Polykrates, and Xerxes, serve to Herodotus for an instance to point a moral on the mutability of human events. Yet the anecdotes recorded about him can rarely be verified, nor can we distinguish real matters of fact from thos*e suitable and impressive myths which so pregnant a situation was sure to bring forth. Among those who visited him at Corinth was Aristoxenus of Tarentum : for the Tarentine leaders, first introduced by Plato, had maintained their correspondence with Dionysius even after his first expulsion from Syracuse to Lokri, and had vainly endea- vored to preserve his unfortunate wife and daughters from the retributive vengeance of the Lokrians. During the palmy days of Dionysius, his envoy Polyarchus had been sent on a mission to Tarentum, where he came into conversation with the chief mag- istrate Archytas. This conversation Aristoxenus had recorded in writing ; probably from the personal testimony of Archytas, whose biography he composed. Polyarchus dwelt upon wealth, power, and sensual enjoyments, as the sole objects worth living for ; pro- nouncing those who possessed them in large masses, as the only beings deserving admiration. At the summit of all stood the Persian King, whom Polyarchus extolled as the most enviable and admirable of mortals. " Next to the Persian King (said he), 1 Plutarch, Timol. c. 14 ; Cicero, Tuscul. Disp. iii. 12,7. His remark, that Dionysius opened the school from anxiety still to have the pleasure of exercising authority, can hardly be meant as serious. We cannot suppose that Dionysius in his exile at Corinth suffered under any v/ant of a comfortable income : for it is mentioned, that all his mov- able furniture (tiriaicevj)) was bought by his namesake Dionysius, the for- lunate despot of the Pontic Herakleia; and this furniture was so magnifi- cent, that the acquisition of it is counted among the peculiar marks of ornament and dignity to the Herakleotic dynasty: see the Fragments of the historian Mcmnon of Ueraklcj^, ch. jv. p. 10, ed- Orell. apud Photium Cod. 224.