Timoleon

Timoleon , d. after 337 BC, Greek statesman and general, noted as the scourge of tyrants. A Corinthian, he went (344) with a small army to Syracuse in answer to the appeal of the Syracusans to their mother city, Corinth, for aid against Dionysius the Younger . Timoleon fought against Dionysius, as well as against Hicetas, tyrant of Leontini, who hoped to usurp Dionysius's power, and against Hicetas's Carthaginian allies. He drove Dionysius and Hicetas from Syracuse, set up a democratic government, and brought new Greek colonists. He defeated (341) a large Carthaginian force, but made peace (c.338) with Carthage. He also ousted (337) the tyrants from the other Sicilian cities before retiring from public life as a result of failing eyesight.

Timoleon, poems by Melville, privately printed in 1891. Besides the title piece, the volume contains some 40 other light poems inspired by the author's travels in Greece and Italy (1857), as well as the unique and contrasting After the Pleasure Party, which is concerned with “the sexual feud that clogs the aspiring life” and a bitter arraignment of the fate that makes “selfhood” seem “incomplete” and yet seldom allows the mating of “matching halves.”