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After Dionysius had taken in marriage both maidens at the same time, he gave a series of public dinners for the soldiers and the larger part of the citizens; for he now renounced the oppressive aspect of his tyranny, and changing to a course of equitable dealing, he ruled over his subjects in more humane fashion, no more putting them to death or banishing them, as had been his practice. [2] After his marriages he let a few days pass and then called an assembly of the Syracusans and urged them to make war against the Carthaginians, declaring that they were most hostile to all Greeks generally and that they had designs at every opportunity on the Greeks of Sicily in particular. [3] For the present, he pointed out, the Carthaginians were inactive because of the plague which had broken out among them and had destroyed the larger part of the inhabitants of Libya, but when they had recovered their strength, they would not refrain from attacking the Sicilian Greeks, against whom they had been plotting from the earliest time. It was therefore preferable, he continued, to wage a decisive war upon them while they were weak than to wait and compete when they were strong. [4] At the same time he pointed out how terrible a thing it was to allow the Greek cities to be enslaved by barbarians, and that these cities would the more zealously join in the war, the more eagerly they desired to obtain their freedom. After speaking at length in support of his policy he speedily won the approval of the Syracusans. [5] Indeed they were no less eager than he for war, first of all because of their hatred of the Carthaginians who were the cause of their being compelled to take orders from the tyrant; secondly, because they hoped that Dionysius would treat them in more humane fashion because of his fear of the enemy and of an attack upon him by the citizens he had enslaved; but most of all, because they hoped that once they had got weapons in their hand, they could strike for their liberty, let Fortune but give them the opportunity.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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