Book 1
4
I was already planning to resign my office and lay down my authority, thinking only how one might stop with safety; for being governor and managing everything began to seem to me unpleasant in itself and, when attended by jealousy, a burden to the flesh. I was still seeking, however, to ensure that the city would never again stand in need of such ministrations. But while I in my simplicity was engaged in all this, the others were already combining against me, planning the manner of their plot and uprising, organizing bands of conspirators, collecting arms, raising money, asking the aid of men in neighbouring towns, and sending embassies to Greece, to the Spartans and the Athenians. What they had already resolved to do with me if they caught me, how they had threatened to tear me to pieces with their own hands, and what punishments they had devised for me, they confessed in public on the rack. For the fact that I met no such fate I have the gods to thank, who exposed the plot: above all, Apollo, who showed me dreams and also sent me men to interpret them fully.
5
‘At this point I ask you, men of Delphi, to imagine yourselves now as alarmed as I was then, and to give me your advice as to what I should have done when I had almost been taken off my guard - and was trying to save myself from the situation. Transport yourselves, then, in fancy to my city of Acragas for a while; see their preparations, hear their threats, and tell me what to do. Use them with humanity? Spare them and put up with them when I am on the point of meeting my death the very next moment—nay, proffer my naked throat, and see my nearest and dearest slain before my eyes? Would not that be sheer imbecility, and should not I, with high and manly resolution and the anger natural to a man of sense who has been wronged, bring those men to book and provide for my own future security as best I may in the situation? That is the advice that I know you would have given me.
