Plato, Letters

[349a] accompany us to Dionysius.” So we set off and went in to where he was and while they two stood in silence, weeping, I said to him— “My friends here are alarmed lest you should take any fresh step regarding Heracleides, contrary to our agreement of yesterday; for I believe it is known that he has taken refuge somewhere hereabouts.” On hearing this, Dionysius fired up and went all colors, just as an angry man would do; and Theodotes fell at his knees and grasping his hand besought him with tears [349b] to do no such thing. And I interposed and said by way of encouragement— “Cheer up, Theodotes; for Dionysius will never dare to act otherwise contrary to yesterday's agreement.” Then Dionysius, with a highly tyrannical glare at me, said— “With you I made no agreement, great or small.” “Heaven is witness,” I replied, “that you did,—not to do what this man is now begging you not to do.” And when I had said this I turned away and went out. After this Dionysius kept on hunting after Heracleides, [349c] while Theodotes kept sending messengers to Heracleides bidding him to flee. And Dionysius sent out Tisias and his peltasts with orders to pursue him; but Heracleides, as it was reported, forestalled them by a fraction of a day and made his escape into the Carthaginians' province.

Now after this Dionysius decided that his previous plot of refusing to pay over Dion's money would furnish him with a plausible ground for a quarrel with me; and, as a first step, [349d] he sent me out of the citadel, inventing the excuse that the women had to perform a sacrifice of ten days' duration in the garden where I was lodging; so during this period he gave orders that I should stay outside with Archedemus. And while I was there Theodotes sent for me and was loud in his indignation at what had then taken place and in his blame of Dionysius; but the latter, when he heard that I had gone to the house of Theodotes, by way of making this a new pretext, [349e] akin to the old, for his quarrel against me, sent a man to ask me whether I had really visited Theodotes when he invited me. “Certainly,” I replied; and he said— “Well then, he ordered me to tell you that you are not acting at all honorably in always preferring Dion and Dion's friends to him.” Such were his words; and after this he did not summon me again to his house, as though it was now quite clear that I was friendly towards Theodotes and Heracleides but hostile to him; and he supposed that I bore him no goodwill because of the clean sweep he was making of Dion's moneys.

Thereafter I was residing outside the citadel among