Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata

When, at the beginning of his rule, he was being besieged as the result of a conspiracy against him among the citizens, his friends advised him to abdicate unless he wished to be overpowered and put to death. But, on seeing that an ox slaughtered by a cook fell instantly, he said, Is it not then distasteful that we, for fear of death which is so momentary, should forsake such a mighty sovereignty ? [*](Cf. Moralia, 783 C-D; Diodorus, xiv. 8; Aelian, Varia Historia, iv. 8; Polyaenus, v. 7.)

Learning that his son, to whom he was intending to bequeath his empire, had debauched the wife of a free citizen, he asked the young man, with some heat, what act of his father’s he knew of like that! And when the youth answered, None, for you did not have a despot for a father. Nor will you have a son, was the reply, unless you stop doing this sort of thing.

At another time he went into his son’s house, and, observing a vast number of gold and silver drinking-cups, he exclaimed, There is no despot in you, for with all the drinking-cups which you are always getting from me you have not made for yourself a single friend.

He levied money on the Syracusans, and later, when he saw them lamenting and begging and protesting that they had none, he ordered a second levy, and this he did twice or thrice. [*](Cf. Aristotle, Politics, v. ii., and the Aristotelian Oeconomica, ii. 20, and Polyaenus, Strategemata, v. 19.) But when, after calling for still more, he heard that they laughed and jeered as they went about in the market-place, he

When his mother, who was well on in years, wanted to get married, he said that he had the power to violate the laws of the State, but not the laws of Nature. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Solon, chap. xx. (89 D).)

While he punished relentlessly all other malefactors, he was very lenient with the footpads, so that the Syracusans should stop their dining and drinking together.

A stranger professed that he would tell him privately and instruct him how to know beforehand those who were plotting against him, and Dionysus bade him speak; whereupon the stranger came close to him and said, Hand me a talent that you may give the impression that you have heard about the plotters’ secret signs; and Dionysius gave it, pretending that he had heard, and marvelling at the man’s clever tactics. [*](Cf. Polyaenus, v. 2. 3, and Stobaeus, Florilegium, iii. 65.)