Note 113 — Chapter LXXXIV · SICILIAN AFFAIRS AFTER THE DEATH OF THE ELDER DIONYSIUS — DIONYSIUS THE YOUNGER — AND DION.

Plutarch, Dion, c. 3. The age of the younger Dionysius is nowhere positively specified. But in the year 356 B. C.—or 355 B. C., at the latest—he had a son, Apollokratês, old enough to be entrusted with the command of Ortygia, when he himself evacuated it for the first time (Plutarch, Dion, c. 37). We cannot suppose Apollokratês to have been less than sixteen years of age at the moment when he was entrusted with such a function, having his mother and sisters under his charge (c. 50). Apollokratês therefore must have been born at least as early as 372 B. C.; perhaps even earlier. Suppose Dionysius the younger to have been twenty years of age when Apollokratês was born; he would thus be in his twenty-fifth year in the beginning of 367 B. C., when Dionysius the elder died. The expressions of Plato, as to the youth of Dionysius the younger at that juncture, are not unsuitable to such an age.