Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata

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