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SELECTIONS FROM PLATO.

250

consists in repletion twice a day, never lying alone at night,

and such other particulars as follow a life of this kind for from these manners no man under the heavens would ever become wise, however admirable his natural disposition may be nor will such a one ever become temperate. And the same thing may be said respecting the other virtues. But no city will remain contented and quiet under its laws when the citizens are of opinion that it is proper to consume all their possessions in superfluous cost, and that they should be idle and heedless of everything except feasting and debauchery. For it is necessary that such cities as these should never cease changing into tyrannies, oligarchies, and democracies, and that those who are powerful in them should not even endure the name of a just and equitable polity. With these and the above-mentioned conceptions I came

perhaps through the interference of some superior power was there laying the foundations of all that has since happened concerning Dion and the Syracusans, and, it may be feared, of more that is to happen still, if you obey not the counsels I now give a second time. However, I affirm that the beginning of all the transactions was my journey to Sicily. For I associated with Dion, who was then a young man, and in my discourse explained and advised him to do such things as were best for mankind; not knowing that I was then in to Syracuse

fortune.


It appears, indeed, that

some sense contriving the dissolution of the tyranny. For Dion being very docile, both with respect to other things and what was then said by me, he so acutely apprehended and readily embraced my doctrines that he surpassed all the young men with whom I was ever acquainted. He was likewise determined to pass the remainder of his life in a manner superior to that of the great majority of the Italians

and and

Sicilians

luxury.

—

viz.,

in pursuing virtue rather

than pleasure

Hence he was hated by those who

conformably to tyrannic

institutes,

even

till

lived

the death of

Dionysius. ^

This was a journey which Plato had taken in the lifetime of the elder See Introduction, p. xxix.

Dionysius.

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