ABSTRACT
In 479 BC Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse, displayed himself unarmed before his people and made a speech in justification of his career (Diod. xi.26). The crowd hailed him, Diodorus says, as 'benefactor, saviour and king'. The interest of this triple acclamation is that it sounds emphatically and oddly hellenistic (cp. OGIS 239,301, etc., inscriptions of the Seleucid and Pergamene kingdoms). Now Diodorus' Sicilian narrative here is taken from the third-century BC historian Timaios of Tauromenium (Diodorus also used the fourth-century Ephorus, and his extensive use of these two writers makes Diodorus the main source for west Greek political history in the classical period.) But Diodorus himself probably added the titles used of Gelon; in the same way he regularly gives his early Egyptian pharaohs the hellenistic royal virtues. Diodorus' information then was possibly false; but his insight is correct.
