When Pythodotus was archon at Athens, the Romans elected as consuls Gaius Plautius and Titus Manlius.2 In this year3 Timoleon frightened the tyrant Dionysius into surrendering the citadel, resigning his office and retiring under a safe-conduct to the Peloponnese, but retaining his private possessions. [2] Thus, through cowardice and meanness, he lost that celebrated tyranny which had been, as people said, bound with fetters of steel,4 and spent the remaining years of his life in poverty at Corinth, furnishing in his life and misfortune an example to all who vaunt themselves unwisely on their successes. [3] He who had possessed four hundred triremes5 arrived shortly after in Corinth in a small tub of a freighter,6 conspicuously displaying the enormity of the change in his fortunes. [4]
Timoleon took over the Island and the forts which had formerly belonged to Dionysius. He razed the citadel and the tyrant's palace on the Island, and restored the independence of the fortified towns. [5] Straightway he set to work on a new code of laws, converting the city into a democracy, and specified in exact detail the law of contracts and all such matters, paying special attention to equality.7 [6] He instituted also the annual office that is held in highest honour, which the Syracusans call the "amphipoly" of Zeus Olympius.8 To this, the first priest elected was Callimenes, the son of Alcadas, and henceforth the Syracusans continued to designate the years by these officials down to the time of my writing this history and of the change in their form of government. For when the Romans shared their citizenship with the Greeks of Sicily, the office of these priests became insignificant, after having been important for over three hundred years.9
Such was the condition of affairs in Sicily.
