7.4
For from the very outset they obtained converse and intimacy with a tyrant who was young and had been badly reared by means of pleasures and flatteries, and were ever contriving for him sundry amours, idle amusements with wine and women, and other unseemly pastimes.
7.5
In this way the tyranny, being softened, like iron in the fire, appeared to its subjects to be kindly, and gradually remitted its excessive cruelty, though its edge was blunted not so much by any clemency in the sovereign as by his love of ease.
7.6
As a consequence, the laxity of the young king gained ground little by little, until at last those adamantine bonds with which the elder Dionysius said he had left the monarchy fastened, were melted and destroyed.
7.7
For it is said that the young king once kept up a drinking bout for ninety consecutive days from its beginning, and that during this time his court gave no access or admission to men or matters of consequence, but drunkenness and raillery and music and dancing and buffoonery held full sway.
8.1
Dion, then, as was natural, was obnoxious to these men, since he indulged in no pleasure or youthful folly. And so they tried to calumniate him by actually giving to his virtues plausible names of vices; for instance, they called his dignity haughtiness, and his boldness of speech self-will.
8.2
Even when he admonished, he was thought to denounce, and when he would not share men’s sins, to despise.
