y the death of such a man.

XX. Dionysius exercised his tyranny over the Syracusans thirty-eight
years, being but twenty-five years old when he seized on the
government. How beautiful and how wealthy a city did he oppress with
slavery! And yet we have it from good authority that he was remarkably
temperate in his manner of living, that he was very active and
energetic in carrying on business, but naturally mischievous and
unjust; from which description every one who diligently inquires into
truth must inevitably see that he was very miserable. Neither did he
attain what he so greatly desired, even when he was persuaded that he
had unlimited power; for, notwithstanding he was of a good family and
reputable parents (though that is contested by some authors), and had a
very large acquaintance of intimate friends and relations, and also
some youths attached to him by ties of love after the fashion of the
Greeks, he could not trust any one of them, but committed the guard of
his person to slaves, whom he had selected from rich men's families and
made free, and to strangers and barbarians. And thus, through an unjust
desire of governing, he in a manner shut himself up in a prison.
Besides, he would not trust his throat to a barber, but had his
daughters taught to shave; so that these royal virgins were forced to
descend to the base and slavish employment of shaving the head and
beard of their father. Nor would he trust even them, when they were
grown up, with a razor; but contrived how they might burn off the hair
of his head and beard with red-hot nutshells. And as to his two wives,
Aristomache, his countrywoman, and Doris of Locris, he never visited
them at night before everything had been well searched and examined.
And as he had surrounded the place where his bed was with a broad
ditch, and made a way over it with a wooden bridge, he drew that bridge
over after shutting his bedchamber door. And as he did not dare to
stand on the ordinary pulpits from which they usually harangued the
people, he generally addressed them from a high tower. And it is said
that when he was disposed to play at ball--for he delighted much in
it--and had pulled off his clothes, he used to give his sword into the
keeping of a young man whom he was very fond of. On this, one of his
intimates said pleasantly, "You certainly trust your life with him;"
and as the young man happened to smile at this, he ordered them both to
be slain, the one for showin