advance a little to meet that death that was making its approaches, as
Catulus did, than, like Marius, to sully the glory of six consulships, and
disgrace his latter days, by 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 nut-shells. 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