A play was being presented in Syracuse and Dionysius arrived in the city at the time when the people were leaving the theatre. When the populace rushed in throngs to him and were questioning him about the Carthaginians, they were unaware, he said, that they had more dangerous enemies than their foreign foes—the men within the city in charge of the public interests; these men the citizens trusted while they held public festivals, but these very men, while plundering the public funds, had let the soldiers go unpaid, and although the enemy was making their preparations for the war on a scale which could not be surpassed and were about to lead their forces upon Syracuse, the generals were giving these matters no concern whatsoever. [2] The reason for such conduct, he continued, he had been aware of before, but now he had got fuller information. For Himilcon had sent a herald to him, ostensibly to treat about the captives, but in fact to urge him, now that Himilcon had induced a large number of Dionysius' colleagues not to bother themselves with what was taking place, at least to offer no opposition, since he, Dionysius, did not choose to co-operate with him. [3] Consequently, Dionysius continued, he did not wish to serve longer as general, but was present in Syracuse to lay down his office; for it was intolerable for him, while the other generals were selling out their country, to be the only one to fight together with the citizens and yet be at the same time destined to be thought in after years to have shared in their betrayal.1 [4]
Although the populace had been stirred by what Dionysius had said and his words spread through the whole army, at the time every man departed to his home full of anxiety. But on the following day, when an assembly had been convened in which Dionysius won no small approval when he lodged many accusations against the magistrates and stirred up the populace against the generals, [5] finally some of the members cried out to appoint him general with supreme power and not to wait until the enemy were storming their walls; for the magnitude of the war, they urged, made necessary such a general, through whose leadership their cause could prosper; as for the traitors, their case would be debated in another assembly, since it was foreign to the present situation; indeed at a former time three hundred thousand Carthaginians had been conquered at Himera when Gelon was general with supreme power.2
