What counsel I have to offer, after this narrative of events, [352a] has been given already, and so let it suffice. But I deemed it necessary to explain the reasons why I undertook my second journey to Sicily [141] because absurd and irrational stories are being told about it. If, therefore, the account I have now given appears to anyone more rational, and if anyone believes that it supplies sufficient excuses for what took place, then I shall regard that account as both reasonable and sufficient.
[352b] Plato to the relatives and companions of Dion wishes well-doing. The policy which would best serve to secure your real “well-doing” [142] is that which I shall now endeavor as best I can to describe to you. And I hope that my advice will not only be salutary to you (though to you in special), but also [352c] to all the Syracusans, in the second place, and, in the third, to your enemies and your foes, unless any of them be a doer of impious deeds [143]; for such deeds are irremediable and none could ever wash out their stain. [144] Mark, then, what I now say. Now that the tyranny is broken down over the whole of Sicily all your fighting rages round this one subject of dispute, the one party desiring to recover the headship, and the other to put the finishing touch to the expulsion of the tyrants. Now the majority of men always believe that the right advice about these matters [352d] is the advising of such action as will do the greatest possible harm to one’s enemies and the greatest possible good to one’s friends; whereas it is by no means easy to do much harm to others without also suffering in turn much harm oneself. And without going far afield one may see such consequences clearly in the recent events in Sicily itself, where the one faction is trying to inflict injury and the other to ward off the injurers; and the tale thereof, if ever you told it to others, [352e] would inevitably prove a most impressive lesson. Of such policies, one may say, there is no lack; but as for a policy which would prove beneficial to all alike, foes as well as friends, or at least as little detrimental as possible to either, such a policy is neither easy to discern, nor, when discerned, easy to carry out; and to advise such a policy or attempt to describe it is much like saying a prayer. [145]