ABSTRACT
The investigation of the Pre-Diodorus historiographical tradition regarding Dionysius has revealed that Philistus, Ephorus, Theopompus and Timaeus, the four most important historians covering the despot's reign. The marriage alliance, of course, is likely to have endangered the complex web of oligarchic alliances which characterised Dionysius' government and parallels the Philoxenus' rash liaison with the tyrant's mistress Galatea and his publicising of it in the Cyclops. The unlikelihood of Ephorus' use of Philistus is further suggested by the facts that whereas Philistus, as we have seen, spent four books discussing Dionysius, Ephorus seems to have spent only two on the tyrant. The epigraphic and numismatic evidence suggests the very real existence and the functioning of both boule and the ecclesia at Syracuse that appears to validate the Philistus' evidence to the effect that the broadest type of political liberty characterised the Syracusan regime under the elder D
