Sir Richard C. Jebb, Selections from the Attic Orators

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Περσῶν...Διονύσιον In illustrating the advantages of μοναρχία, Isocr. takes the word in its widest sense, and draws his examples from the most diverse forms of government, viz. (1) the Persian monarchy, — a hereditary and constitutional despotism, — μοναρχία τυραννική, but κατὰ νόμον καὶ πατρική, Arist. Pol. III. 14: (2) the τυραννίς, an unconstitutional despotism, which is only a perverted form, παρέκβασις, of monarchy, and not properly a πολιτεία at all: (3) the constitutions of Sparta and of Carthage, in both of which the general tendency was oligarchical, and the ‘royal’ office meant principally the chief command in war: Arist. Pol. II. 9. § 11.

τηλικαύτην γεγ The real lessons taught by the Persian Wars were that free men fight better than slaves, and that good strategy is incompatible with the caprices of a feeble despot.

πολιορκ When Dionysius became tyrant of Syracuse in 406 B.C. the Carthaginians were rapidly conquering the Sicilian cities. His first operations against them failed: and the words in the text refer, not to an actual siege of Syracuse (τὴν αὑτοῦ πατρίδα), but to its imminent danger after the fall of Gela and Camarina. The peace which he made with Himilcon in 405 B.C. was a compromise which gave him leisure to confirm his own power. His tyranny was disastrous to all the higher interests of Hellenic civilisation. Cp. Lysias or. XXXIII. § 5 (above, p. 51).