It is not therefore advisable, as I said, to deal at excessive length with the fate of such a man, but it is otherwise with the Sicilian Agathocles and Dionysius and certain other rulers of renown.
Of these two, the latter started from an obscure and humble position, and Agathocles, as Timaeus ridiculing him tells us, was a potter and leaving the wheel and the clay and the smoke came to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Syracuse&groupId=994&placeId=1753">Syracuse</a> as a young man.
In the first place they both of them became in their time tyrants of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Syracuse&groupId=994&placeId=1753">Syracuse</a>, a city which then ranked highest in opulence and dignity,
and they were afterwards recognized as kings of the whole of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Sicily&groupId=973&placeId=1724">Sicily</a> and had made themselves masters even of some parts of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Italy&groupId=656&placeId=1199">Italy</a>.
And Agathocles not only made an attempt to conquer <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Africa&groupId=300&placeId=294">Africa</a> but retained his exalted position until his death.
So that they say that Publius Scipio, who was the first to bring <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Carthage&groupId=441&placeId=820">Carthage</a> to her knees, when some one asked him whom he thought the greatest statesmen combining courage and wisdom, replied "Agathocles and Dionysius the Sicilians."
To the careers of such men indeed it is proper for us to direct the attention of our readers, touching a little on the vicissitudes of fortune and the uncertainty of human affairs, and in general adding to our bare narrative some instructive reflections, but we are by no means called on to do so in the case of the Egyptian Agathocles.
Walbank Commentary