2.5
And yet why should anyone mention these men who might have some legitimate ground for pride because of Alexander, when even Clearchus, after he became despot of Heracleia,In Pontus: Cf. Müller, Frag. Hist. Graec. iii. p. 526. used to carry a thunderbolt, i.e. a skepton, instead of skeptron, sceptre. and named one of his sons Thunderer? And Dionysius the younger styled himself the son of Apollo in the inscription: Sprung from a Dorian mother by union with Phoebus Apollo. Cf. Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. ii. p. 324. And Dionysius’s father killed ten thousand or more citizens, and, led on by envy, betrayed his brother to the enemy, nor could he wait for his already aged mother to die a few days later, but strangled her Cf. Aelian, Varia Historia, xiii. 45.; yet in one of his tragedies he wrote these words Cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 797, Dionysius, no. 7.: The mother of foul wrong is tyranny! Notwithstanding, of his daughters he named one Virtue, another Temperance, a third Justice. Cf. Life of Dion, chap. vi. (960 c). And yet other persons publicly styled themselves Benefactors,Probably Ptolemy Euergetes II. Physcon (Cf. Athenaeus xii. 549 d), rather than Philopater (Cf.Moralia, 56 e, Polybius v. 34), is alluded to. Conquerors, Saviours, or The Great; but no one would be able to tell the tale of their marriages one after another, like the matings of horses, as they spent their days with no restraint amid herds of women, their corruption of boys, their beating of drums in the company of emasculated men, their daily dicing, their flute-playing in the public theatres, the night that was too short for them at their dinners, and the day at their breakfasts.
