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Updated: May 9, 2025
The titles of these books are, 'John Marr and Other Sailors' , and 'Timoleon' . There is no question that Mr. Melville's absorption in philosophical studies was quite as responsible as the failure of his later books for his cessation from literary productiveness. That he sometimes realised the situation will be seen by a passage in 'Moby Dick': 'Didn't I tell you so? said Flask.
There attended on the solemnity several thousands of men and women, all crowned with flowers, and arrayed in fresh and clean attire, which made it look like the procession of a public festival; while the language of all, and their tears mingling with their praise and benediction of the dead Timoleon, manifestly showed that it was not any superficial honor, or commanded homage, which they paid him, but the testimony of a just sorrow for his death, and the expression of true affection.
Had not Marcus Aurelius to suffer from Commodus, the son who already showed signs of the monster he was to become; from Faustina, the wife whom he loved, but who cared not for him? Was not destiny's hand laid heavy on Paulus Aemilius, who was fully as wise as Timoleon? did not both his sons die, one five days before his triumph in Rome, and the other but three days after?
The most glorious and magnificent spectacle of all was the tent of Timoleon, round which booty of every kind was piled up in heaps, among which were a thousand corslets of exquisite workmanship, and ten thousand shields. As they were but few to gather the plunder of so many, and as they fell in with such riches, it was only on the third day that they managed to erect a trophy of their victory.
These early demonstrations of divine favor greatly encouraged his whole army; so that, making all the speed they were able, by a voyage across the open sea, they were soon passing along the coast of Italy. But the tidings that came from Sicily much perplexed Timoleon, and disheartened his soldiers.
While all of us have been watching, with that admiring sympathy which never fails to wait on courage and magnanimity, the career of the new Timoleon in Sicily, while we have been reckoning, with an interest scarcely less than in some affair of personal concern, the chances and changes that bear with furtherance or hindrance upon the fortune of united Italy, we are approaching, with a quietness and composure which more than anything else mark the essential difference between our own form of democracy and any other yet known in history, a crisis in our domestic policy more momentous than any that has arisen since we became a nation.
As, however, not only, as Simonides says, "On every lark must grow a crest," but also in every democracy there must spring up a false accuser, so was it at Syracuse: two of their popular spokesmen, Laphystius and Demaenetus by name, fell to slander Timoleon.
Of all the biographies contained in his work, none might excite greater suspicion of incorrectness than that of Timoleon, on account of the extraordinary character both of the man and of the incidents of his career. His story reads like a romance of the ancient times, like a legend of some half-mythical hero, rather than like the true account of an actual man.
Twice before had Timoleon pleaded with his brother, beseeching him not to destroy the liberties of his country; but when Timophanes turned a deaf ear to those appeals, Timoleon connived at the action of his friends, who put him to death, whilst he himself, bathed in a flood of tears, stood a little way aloof.
A magnificent monument was erected to his memory. “The mournful letters written by Plato after the death of Dion contrasts strikingly with the enviable end of Timoleon, and with the grateful inscription of the Syracusans on his tomb.” And if any new power threatened to rise over the ruins of the Spartan State, and become paramount in Greece, it was Thebes.
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