Textus Originalis

Traduzione

English — scholarly

Bernadotte Perrin

camp of Timoleon, where for the first time he was seen as a private person and in humble garb, he was sent off to Corinth with a single ship and a small treasure, having been born and reared in a tyranny which was the greatest and most illustrious of all tyrannies, and having held this for ten years, and then for twelve other years, after the expedition of Dion, having been involved in harassing struggles and wars, and having surpassed in his sufferings all his acts of tyranny. For he lived to see the violent deaths of his grown-up sons and the violation of his maiden daughters, and the shameful abuse of the person of his wife, who was at the same time his sister, and who, while living, was subjected to the most wanton pleasures of his enemies, and after being murdered, together with her children, was cast into the sea. These things, then, have been fully described in my Life of Dion.¹ XIV. But as for Dionysius, after his arrival at Corinth there was no Greek who did not long to behold and speak to him. But those who rejoiced in his misfortunes were lead by their hatred to come together gladly that they might trample, as it were upon one who had been cast down by Fortune; while those who regarded rather the reversal of his fortune and sympathised with him, saw strong proof, amid the weakness of things that are human and seen, of the power of causes that are unseen and divine. For that age showed no work either of nature or of art that was comparable to this work of Fortune, namely, the recent tyrant of Sicily in Corinth, whiling his time away at a fishmonger’s or sitting in a perfumer’s