Categoria: Cartas

With these thoughts in my mind I came to Italy and Sicily on my first visit. My first impressions on arrival were those of strong disapproval — disapproval of the kind of life which was there called the life of happiness, stuffed full as it was with the banquets of the Italian Greeks and Syracusans,…

Tradução de A. Pinto de Carvalho, RBF, volume XII, fasc. 48, Outubro-Dezembro de 1962 À minha chegada, pensei que devia, antes de mais nada, certificar-me se Dionísio estava na verdade enamorado da filosofia, ou se era destituído de fundamento tudo quanto me havia sido dito em Atenas. Ora, para obter a prova disto, existe um…

(7.323d) Plato to Dion’s associates and friends wishes well-doing. You wrote to me that I ought to consider that your policy was the same as that which Dion had ; and moreover you charged me to support it, so far as I can, both by deed and word. Now if you really hold the same…

With these views and thus nerved to the task, I sailed from home, in the spirit which some imagined, but principally through a feeling of shame with regard to myself, lest I might some day appear to myself wholly and solely a mere man of words, one who would never of his own will lay…

The time of my first visit to Sicily and my stay there was taken up with all these incidents. On a later occasion I left home and again came on an urgent summons from Dionysios. But before giving the motives and particulars of my conduct then and showing how suitable and right it was, I…

Let this be the end of my advice and injunction and of the narrative of my first visit to Dionysios. Whoever wishes may next hear of my second journey and voyage, and learn that it was a reasonable and suitable proceeding. My first period of residence in Sicily was occupied in the way which I…

I hear also that he has since written about what he heard from me, composing what professes to be his own handbook, very different, so he says, from the doctrines which he heard from me ; but of its contents I know nothing ; I know indeed that others have written on the same subjects…

How he dishonoured him, I will now state. Up to this time he had allowed Dion to remain in possession of his property and to receive the income from it. But not long after the foregoing events, as if he had entirely forgotten his letter to that effect, he no longer allowed Dion’s trustees to…

This was the language and these the exhortations given by us, the conspirators against Dionysios according to the charges circulated from various sources — charges which, prevailing as they did with Dionysios, caused the expulsion of Dion and reduced me to a state of apprehension. But when — to summarise great events which happened in…