Capítulo 4
[4.1] Now, Dion was a brother of Aristomache, and at first was honoured because of his sister; afterwards, however, he gave proof of his wisdom, and was presently beloved by the tyrant for his own sake.
[4.2] In addition to all his other favours, Dionysius ordered his treasurers to give Dion whatever he asked, although they were to tell Dionysius on the same day what they had given.
[4.3] But though Dion was even before of a lofty character, magnanimous, and manly, he advanced still more in these high qualities when, by some divine good fortune, Plato came to Sicily.[5]
[4.4] This was not of man’s devising, but some heavenly power, as it would seem, laying far in advance of the time a foundation for the liberty of Syracuse, and devising a subversion of tyranny, brought Plato from Italy to Syracuse and made Dion his disciple.
[4.5] Dion was then quite young, but of all the companions of Plato he was by far the quickest to learn and the readiest to answer the call of virtue,
[4.6] as Plato himself has written,[6] and as events testify. For though he had been reared in habits of submission under a tyrant, and though he was fully accustomed to a life that was subservient and timorous, as well as to ostentatious service at court and vulgar luxury and a regimen that counts pleasures and excesses as the highest good,
[4.7] nevertheless, as soon as he got a taste of a rational philosophy which led the way to virtue, his soul was speedily on fire; and since he very artlessly and impulsively expected, from his own ready obedience to the call of higher things, that the same arguments would have a like persuasive force with Dionysius, he earnestly set to work and at last brought it to pass that the tyrant, in a leisure hour, should meet Plato and hear him discourse.