banquet with everything that could delight his senses, delicious food,
costly wine, flowers, perfumes, music; but with a sword with the point
almost touching his head, and hanging by a single horsehair! This was to
show the condition in which a usurper lived!

Thus Dionysius was in constant dread. He had a wide trench round his
bedroom, with a drawbridge that he drew up and put down with his own
hands; and he put one barber to death for boasting that he held a razor
to the tyrant's throat every morning. After this he made his young
daughters shave him; but by and by he would not trust them with a razor,
and caused them to singe of his beard with hot nutshells! He was said to
have put a man named Antiphon to death for answering him, when he asked
what was the best kind of brass, 'That of which the statues of Harmodius
and Aristogeiton were made.' These were the two Athenians who had killed
the sons of Pisistratus the tyrant, so that the jest was most offensive,
but its boldness might have gained forgiveness for it. One philosopher,
named Philoxenus, he sent to a dungeon for finding fault with his
poetry, but he afterwards composed another piece, which he thought so
superior, that he could not be content without sending for this adverse
critic to hear it. When he had finished reading it, he looked to
Philoxenus for a compliment; but the philosopher only turned round to
the guards, and said dryly, 'Carry me back to prison.' This time
Dionysius had the sense to laugh, and forgive his honesty.

All these stories may not be true; but that they should have been
current in the ancient world shows what was the character of the man of
whom they were told, how stern and terrible was his anger, and how
easily it was incurred. Among those who came under it was a Pythagorean
called Pythias, who was sentenced to death, according to the usual fate
of those who fell under his suspicion.