rom it. For Akragas
and Gela, large cities, which after the war with Athens had been
destroyed by the Carthaginians, were now repeopled; the former colonists
led by Megellus and Pheristus, from Elea on the south coast of Italy,
and the latter by a party led by Gorgus, who sailed from Keos and
collected together the former citizens.

When these cities were being reorganised Timoleon not only afforded them
peace and safety, but also gave them great assistance, and showed so
great an interest in them as to be loved and respected by them as their
real Founder. The other cities also all of them looked upon him with the
same feelings, so that no peace could be made by them, no laws
established, no country divided among settlers, no constitutional
changes made that seemed satisfactory, unless he had a hand in them,
and arranged them just as an architect, when a building is finished,
gives some graceful touches which adorn the whole.

XXXVI. There were many Greeks, in his lifetime, who became great, and
did great things, such as Timotheus, and Agesilaus, and Pelopidas, and
Timoleon's great model, Epameinondas. But these men's actions produced a
glory which was involved in much strain and toil, and some of their
deeds have incurred censure, and even been repented of. Whereas those of
Timoleon, if we except the terrible affair of his brother, have nothing
in them to which we cannot apply, like Timaeus, that verse of
Sophocles--

"Ye gods, what Venus or what grace divine
Took part in this."

For as in the poetry of Antimachus, and the paintings of Dionysius, the
Kolophonians, we find a certain vigour and power, yet think them forced
in expression, and produced with much labour, while the paintings of
Nikomachus and the verses of Homer, besides their other graces and
merits, have the charm of seeming to have been composed easily and
without effort, so also the campaigns of Timoleon, when compared with
the laborious and hardly contested ones of Epameinondas or Agesilaus,
seem to have, besides their glory, a wonderful ease, which property is
not so much to be attributed to good luck as to prosperous valour. He,
however, ascribed all his successes to Fortune, for in writing to his
friends at home, and in his public speeches to the Syracusans, he
frequently expressed his thankfulness to this goddess, who, having
determined to save Sicily, had chosen to ascribe to him the credit of
doing it. In his house he built a chapel t