These are the lessons which I tried to teach, first to Dion,secondly to Dionysios, and now for the third time to you. Do youobey me thinking of Zeus the Preserver, the patron of thirdventures, and looking at the lot of Dionysios and Dion, of whom theone who disobeyed me is living in dishonour, while he who obeyed mehas died honourably. For the one thing which is wholly right and nobleis to strive for that which is most honourable for a man's self andfor his country, and to face the consequences whatever they may be.
For none of us can escape death, nor, if a man could do so, wouldit, as the vulgar suppose, make him happy. For nothing evil or good,which is worth mentioning at all, belongs to things soulless; but goodor evil will be the portion of every soul, either while attached tothe body or when separated from it.
And we should in very truth always believe those ancient andsacred teachings, which declare that the soul is immortal, that it hasjudges, and suffers the greatest penalties when it has beenseparated from the body. Therefore also we should consider it a lesserevil to suffer great wrongs and outrages than to do them. The covetousman, impoverished as he is in the soul, turns a deaf ear to thisteaching; or if he hears it, he laughs it to scorn with fanciedsuperiority, and shamelessly snatches for himself from every sourcewhatever his bestial fancy supposes will provide for him the meansof eating or drinking or glutting himself with that slavish andgross pleasure which is falsely called after the goddess of love. Heis blind and cannot see in those acts of plunder which are accompaniedby impiety what heinous guilt is attached to each wrongful deed, andthat the offender must drag with him the burden of this impietywhile he moves about on earth, and when he has travelled beneath theearth on a journey which has every circumstance of shame and misery.
It was by urging these and other like truths that I convincedDion, and it is I who have the best right to be angered with hismurderers in much the same way as I have with Dionysios. For both theyand he have done the greatest injury to me, and I might almost sayto all mankind, they by slaying the man that was willing to actrighteously, and he by refusing to act righteously during the whole ofhis rule, when he held supreme power, in which rule if philosophyand power had really met together, it would have sent forth a light toall men, Greeks and barbarians, establishing fully for all the truebelief that there can be no happiness either for the community orfor the individual man, unless he passes his life under the rule ofrighteousness with the guidance of wisdom, either possessing thesevirtues in himself, or living under the rule of godly men and havingreceived a right training and education in morals. These were the aimswhich Dionysios injured, and for me everything else is a triflinginjury compared with this.
The murderer of Dion has, without knowing it, done the same asDionysios. For as regards Dion, I know right well, so far as it ispossible for a man to say anything positively about other men, that,if he had got the supreme power, he would never have turned his mindto any other form of rule, but that, dealing first with Syracuse,his own native land, when he had made an end of her slavery, clothedher in bright apparel, and given her the garb of *******, he wouldthen by every means in his power have ordered aright the lives ofhis fellow-citizens by suitable and excellent laws; and the thing nextin order, which he would have set his heart to accomplish, was tofound again all the States of Sicily and make them free from thebarbarians, driving out some and subduing others, an easier task forhim than it was for Hiero. If these things had been accomplished bya man who was just and brave and temperate and a philosopher, the samebelief with regard to virtue would have been established among themajority which, if Dionysios had been won over, would have beenestablished, I might almost say, among all mankind and would havegiven them salvation. But now some higher power or avenging fiendhas fallen upon them, inspiring them with lawlessness, godlessness andacts of recklessness issuing from ignorance, the seed from which allevils for all mankind take root and grow and will in future bear thebitterest harvest for those who brought them into being. Thisignorance it was which in that second venture wrecked and ruinedeverything.
And now, for good luck's sake, let us on this third ventureabstain from words of ill omen. But, nevertheless, I advise you, hisfriends, to imitate in Dion his love for his country and his temperatehabits of daily life, and to try with better auspices to carry out hiswishes-what these were, you have heard from me in plain words. Andwhoever among you cannot live the ****** Dorian life according tothe customs of your forefathers, but follows the manner of life ofDion's murderers and of the Sicilians, do not invite this man tojoin you, or expect him to do any loyal or salutary act; but inviteall others to the work of resettling all the States of Sicily andestablishing equality under the laws, summoning them from Sicilyitself and from the whole Peloponnese-and have no fear even of Athens;for there, also, are men who excel all mankind in their devotion tovirtue and in hatred of the reckless acts of those who shed theblood of friends.
