Letters (3.317-3.318)

Yea, you yourself also are a witness of this, that I have never yet ceased to strive for this very object. And it was agreed between us—although with difficulty—that I should sail home,

since you were engaged in war, [*] and that, when peace was restored, Dion and I should go to Syracuse and that you should invite us. And that was how things took place as regards my first sojourn at Syracuse [*] and my safe return home again. But on the second occasion, when peace was restored, you did not keep to our agreement in the invitation you gave me but wrote that I should come alone, and stated that you would send for Dion later on. On this account I did not go; and, moreover, I was vexed also with Dion; for he was of opinion that it was better for me to go and to yield to your wishes. Subsequently, after a year’s interval, a trireme arrived with letters from you, and the first words written in the letters were to the effect that if I came I should find that Dion’s affairs would all proceed as I desired, but the opposite if I failed to come. And indeed I am ashamed to say how many letters came at that time from Italy and Sicily from you and from others on your account, or to how many of my friends and acquaintances they were addressed, all enjoining me to go and beseeching me to trust you entirely. It was the firm opinion of everyone, beginning with Dion, that it was my duty to make the voyage and not be faint-hearted. But I always made my age [*] an excuse; and as for you, I kept assuring them that you would not be able to withstand those who slander us and desire that we should quarrel; for I saw then, as I see now, that, as a rule, when great and exorbitant wealth is in the hands either of private citizens or of monarchs, the greater it is, the greater and more numerous are the slanderers it breeds and the hordes of parasites and wastrels—than which there is no greater evil generated by wealth or by the other privileges of power. Notwithstanding, I put aside all these considerations and went, resolving that none of my friends should lay it to my charge that owing to my lack of energy all their fortunes were ruined when they might have been saved from ruin. On my arrival—for you know, to be sure, all that subsequently took place—I, of course, requested, in accordance with the agreement in your letters, that you should, in the first place, recall Dion on terms of friendship—which terms I mentioned; and if you had then yielded to this request, things would probably have turned out better than they have done now both for you and Syracuse and for the rest of Greece—that, at least, is my own intuitive belief.

Next, I requested that Dion’s family should have possession of his property,

instead of the distributors, whom you wot of, having the distribution of it. And further, I deemed it right that the revenue which was usually paid over to him year by year should be forwarded to him all the more, rather than all the less, because of my presence. None of these requests being granted, I asked leave to depart. Thereupon you kept urging me to stop for the year, declaring that you would sell all Dion’s property and send one half of the proceeds to Corinth and retain the other half for his son. And I could mention many other promises none of which you fulfilled; but the number of them is so great that I cut it short. For when you had sold all the goods, without Dion’s consent—though you had declared that without his consent you would not dispose of them—you put the coping-stone on all your promises, my admirable friend, in a most outrageous way: you invented a plan that was neither noble nor ingenious nor just nor profitable —namely, to scare me off from so much as seeking for the dispatch of the money, as being in ignorance of the events then going on. For when you sought to expel Heracleides [*] unjustly, as it seemed to the Syracusans as well as to myself—because I had joined with Theodotes and Eurybius in entreating you not to do so, you took this as an ample excuse, and asserted that it had long been plain to you that I paid no regard to you, but only to Dion and Dion’s friends and connections, and now that Theodotes and Heracleides, who were Dion’s connections, were the subjects of accusations, I was using every means to prevent their paying the just penalty. Such, then, was the course of events as regards our association in political affairs. And if you perceived any other estrangement in my attitude towards you, you may reasonably suppose that that was the way in which all these things took place. Nor need you be surprised; for I should justly be accounted base by any man of sense had I been influenced by the greatness of your power to betray my old and intimate guest-friend—a man, to say the least, in no wise inferior to you— when, because of you, he was in distress, and to prefer you, the man who did the wrong, and to do everything just as you bade me—for filthy lucre’s sake, obviously; for to this, and nothing else, men would have ascribed this change of front in me, if I had changed. Well, then, it was the fact that things took this course, owing to you, which produced this wolf-love [*] and want of fellowship between you and me.