XV.  But for all that, certain of his sayings are remembered, which sufficiently prove that he showed real greatness of mind in adapting himself to his altered circumstances.  When he arrived at Leukas, which, like Syracuse, was a Corinthian colony, he said that he was like a young man who has got into disgrace.  They associate gaily with their brothers, but are ashamed to meet their fathers, and avoid them:  and so he was ashamed to go to the parent city, but would gladly live there with them.  Another time in Corinth, when some stranger coarsely jeered at the philosophic studies in which he used to delight when in power, and at last asked him what good he had obtained from the wisdom of Plato, “Do you think,” answered he, “that I have gained nothing from Plato, when I bear my reverse of fortune as I do.”  When Aristoxenus, the musician, and some others asked him what fault he had found with Plato, and why, he answered that absolute power, amongst its many evils, was especially unfortunate in this, that none of a despot’s so-called friends dare to speak their mind openly.  And he himself, he said, had been by such men deprived of the friendship of Plato.  A man, who thought himself witty, once tried to make a joke of Dionysius by shaking out his cloak, when he came into his presence, as is the custom before despots, to show that one has no concealed weapons; but he repaid the jest by begging him to do it when he left him, that he might be sure that he had not stolen any of his property.

Philip of Macedon once, when they were drinking together, made some sneering remark about the poetry and tragedies which Dionysius the elder had written, pretending to be at a loss to know how he found time for such pursuits; but Dionysius cleverly answered, “He wrote them during the time which you and I, and all who are thought such lucky fellows, spend over our wine.”

Plato never saw Dionysius at Corinth, for he was dead at that time; but Diogenes of Sinope, when he first met him, said, “How unworthily you live, Dionysius.”  Dionysius answered him, “Thank you, Diogenes, for sympathising with my misfortunes.”  “Why,” said Diogenes; “do you suppose that I sympathise with you, and am not rather grieved that a slave like you, a man fit, like your father, to grow old and die on a miserable throne, should be living in luxury and enjoyment amongst us?” So, when I compare with these sayings of his the lamentations which Philistius pours forth over the daughters of Leptines, that they had fallen from the glories of sovereign power into a humble station, they seem to me like the complainings of a woman who has lost her perfumes, her purple dresses, or her jewels.

These details, I think, for readers who are at leisure, are not foreign to the design of biography, and not without value.