rest until he obtained permission to depart. He
had failed in his mission of benevolence and friendship. All the vast
possessions of Dion were confiscated, and Plato had the mortification to
hear of this injury in the very palace to which he went as a reformer.

(M685) Incensed at the seizure of his property, and hopeless of permission
to return, and of all those reforms which he had projected, Dion now
meditated the overthrow of the power of Dionysius, and his own restoration
at the point of the sword. During his exile he had chiefly resided in
Athens, enjoying the teaching of his friend Plato, and dispensing his vast
wealth in generous charities. Nor did Plato fully approve of his plans for
the overthrow of Dionysius, anticipating little good from such violence,
although he fully admitted his wrongs. But other friends, less judicious
and more interested, warmly seconded his projects. With aid from various
sources, he at last could muster eight hundred veterans, with which he
ventured to attack the most powerful despot in Greece, and in his own
stronghold. And so enthusiastic was Dion, all disparity of forces was a
matter of indifference. Moreover, he accounted it glory and honor to
perish in so just and noble a cause as the liberation of Sicily from a
weak and cruel despot, every way inferior to his father in character,
though as strong in resources.

(M686) But the friends of Dion did not dream of throwing away their lives.
They calculated on a rising of the Syracusans to throw off an
insupportable yoke, and they had utter contempt for the tyrant himself,
knowing his drunken habits, and effeminate character, and personal
incompetency. So, after ten years' exile, Dion, with his followers, landed
in Sicily, at Heracleia, also in the absence of Dionysius, who had quitted
Syracuse for Italy, with eighty triremes, so that the city was easy of
access.

(M687) This unaccountable mistake of the tyrant in leaving his capital at
such a crisis, was regarded with great joy by the small army of Dion,
which marched out at once from Heracleia, and was joined in the
Agrigentian territory with two hundred horsemen. As he approached
Syracuse, other bands joined him, so that he had five thousand men as he
approached the capital. Timocrates, the husband of Dion's late wife, for
his wife was taken away from him, was left in command at Syracuse with a
large force of mercenaries. But as Dion advanced to the city, there was a
general ris