Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/62

86 HISTORY OF GREECE. had purposely assembled around him 1 should have been so riai culously bad as to disgust an impartial audience : next, it i.* still more improbable that a simple poetical failure, though doubtless mortifying to him, should work with such fearful effect as to plunge him into anguish and madness. To unnerve thus violent- ly a person like Dionysius deeply stained with the great crimes of unscrupulous ambition, but remarkably exempt from infirmities some more powerful cause is required; and that cause stands out conspicuously, when we conceive the full circumstances of the Olympic festival of 384 B. c. He Lad accumulated for this oc- casion all the means of showing himself off, like Kroesus in his interview with Solon, as the most prosperous and powerful man 388 B. c., could be borne patiently by Dionysius how are we to believe that he was driven mad by the far less striking failure in 384 B. c.? Sure- ly it stands to reason that the violent invective of Lysias and the profound humiliation of Dionysius, are parts of one and the same Olympic phsenom- enon ; the former as cause, or an essential part of the cause the latter as effect. The facts will then read consistently and in proper hannony. Ay they now appear in Diodorus, there is no rational explanation of the terri- ble suffering of Dionysius described in xv. 7 ; it appears like a comic ex- aggeration of reality. 3. Again, the prodigious efforts and outlay, which Diodorus affirms Dionysius to have made in 388 B. c. for display at the Olympic games come just at the time when Dionysius, being in the middle of his Italian war, could hardly have had either leisure or funds to devote so much to the other purpose ; whereas at the next Olympic festival, or 384 B. c., he was free from war, and had nothing to divert him from preparing with great efforts all the means of Olympic success. It appears to me that the facts which Diodorus has stated are nearly all correct, but that he has misdated them, referring to 388 B. c., or Olymp. 98 what properly belongs to 384 B. c., or Olymp. 99. Very possibly Dionysius may have sent one or more chariots to run in the former of tho two Olympiads ; but his signal efforts, with his insulting failure brought about partly by Lysias, belong to the latter. Dionysius of Halikamassus, to whom we owe the citation from the oration of Lysias, does not specify to which of the Olympiads it belongs. 1 Diodor. xv. 7. did Kal Trot^uara -ypdtyeiv VTrear^aaro peril iroh/itjt f, nal roi)f sv rov'oic do^av e^ovraf ueTETtefjirero, Kal Trporifttiv avroi'i Mii rtiv Troi.rifj.uTuv liriararaf Kal The Syracnsnn historian Athan's (or Athenis) had noticed some pecu- liar phrases which appeared in the verses of Dionysins : see Athenseus, iii. n 98