Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/91

DIOX UXDEU THE NEW RKIGN. 05 grateful for his generous offer of pecuniary as well as perse na support. 1 In all probability Dion actually carried the offer ;nto effect, for to a man of his disposition, money had little value ex- cept as a means of extending influence and acquiring reputation. The war with Carthage seems to have lasted at least throughout the next year,2 and to have been terminated not long after- wards. But it never assumed those perilous proportions which had been contemplated by the council as probable. As a mere contingency, however, it was sufficient to inspire Dionysius with alarm, combined with the other exigencies of his new situation. At first he was painfully conscious of his own inexperience ; anx- ious about hazards which he now saw for the first time, and not merely open to advice, but eager and thankful for suggestions, from any quarter where he could place confidence. Dion, identi- fied by ancient connection as well as by marriage with the Diony- sian family trusted, more than any one else, by the old despot, and surrounded with that accessory dignity which ascetic strictness of life usually confers in excess presented every title to such confidence. And when he was found not only the most trustwor- thy, but the most frank and fearless, of councillors, Dionysius glad- ly yielded both to the measures which he advised and to the im- pulses which he inspired. Such was the political atmosphere of Syracuse during the pe- riod immediately succeeding the new accession, while the splen- did obsequies in honor of the departed Dionysius were being sol- emnized ; coupled with a funeral pile so elaborate as to confer celebrity on Timaeus the constructor and commemorated by ar- 1 Plutarch, Dion, c. 7. 'O [J.EV nvv Aioviioiof vTrepfyvijf TTJV /j.eya%oipvxia.v Wav/iaae KO.L TIJV T:po-&vfj.iav fjyumjasv. 2 Dionysius II. was engaged at war at the time when Plato first visited him at Syracuse, within the year immediately after his accession (Plato, Epistol. iii. p. 317 A). We may seasonably presume that this was the war with Carthage. Compare Diodorus (xvi. 5), who mentions that the younger Dionysius also carried on war for some little time, in a languid manner, against the Lu^anians ; and that he founded two cities on the coast of Apulia in the driatic. I think it probable that these two last-mentioned foundations were acts of Dionysius I., not of Dionysius II. They were not likely to be undertaken by a young prince of backward disposition > at his first ae cession. 6*