Book 6
56
His son also, the second Dionysius, had numerous flatterers, who were called by the common people Dionysiocolaces. And they, because Dionysius himself was not very sharp sighted, used to pretend while at supper not to be able to see very far, but they would touch whatever was near them as if they could not see it, until Dionysius himself guided their hands to the dishes. And when Dionysius spat, they would often put out their own faces for him to spit upon: and then licking off the spittle and even his vomit, they declared that it was sweeter than honey. And Timæus, in their twenty-second book of his Histories, says that Democles the flatterer of the younger Dionysius, as it was customary in Sicily to make a sacrifice from house to house in honour of the nymphs, and for men to spend the night around their statues when quite drunk, and to dance around the goddesses—Democles neglecting the nymphs, and saying that there was no use in attending to lifeless deities, went and danced before Dionysius. And at a subsequent time being once sent on an embassy with some colleagues to Dion, when they were all proceeding in a trireme, he being accused by the rest of behaving in a seditious manner in respect of this journey, and of having injured the general interests of Dionysius, when Dionysius was very indignant, he said that differences had arisen between himself and his colleagues, because after supper they took a pæan of Phrynichus or Stesichorus, and some of them took one of Pindar's and sang it; but he, with those who agreed with him, went entirely through the hymns which had been composed by Dionysius himself. And he undertook to bring forward undeniable proof of this assertion. For that his accusers were not acquainted with the modulation of those songs, but that he on the contrary was ready to sing them all through one after the other. And so, when Dionysius was pacified, Democles continued, and said, But you would do me a great favour, O Dionysius, if you were to order any one of those who knows it to teach me the paean which you composed in honour of Aesculapius; for I hear that you have taken great pains with that.
