THE WENDY HUT

Taranaki Daily News, 19 September 1931, Page 24 (Supplement)

THE WENDY HUT

STORIES OF ANCIENT SICILY. THE EAR OF DIONYSIUS. In the tremendous rock near the quarry where prisoners ; were-once kept is the Ear of Dionysius, the Tyrant of Syracuse. This entrance to a huge cave is shaped like a gigantic human ear, and is called the Ear of Dionysius because the old ■_ story says that the tyrant caused the prison to be-shaped , like'an ear, so that he might listen, unseen by his prisoners, and hear even their whispers. At the top of the cave is a small room hacked out of the rock, and here Dionysius learnt tire eecrets of the prisoners who collected in the great cave ' to escape rain, bitter wind, and the blazing sun which poured . down on them' in the quarries. - To-day, if you murmur softly: “Dionysius, are you there?” tlie echo" thunders out dearly, proving that nothing uttered in that eave can be private. A. strange man was Dionysius. Of humble birth and poor, he entered Syracuse in. the army of Hermocrates, and was left for dead on the battle-field by the Syracusans. And* this was - the man who became their leader, who built their magnificent walls, who turned Syracuse, into a famous workshop where engines for hurling s'tones were made, and who made it the ■ greatest fortified city of Europe. But, though the fame of his name rang in many lands, his power only seemed to bring him fear and hatred. It is said that he made the Ear where he spent many hours listening because he was afraid of the prisoners—who could not possibly harm him. He never trusted his head to a ■barber, but burnt his beard himself in the flame of a little oil lamp. So suspicious did he become that at last he would not allow even his wife or his children to enter his private apartments till they were searched to make sure that they had no concealed weapons. But his fear did not prevent him from stealing the golden mantle from the statue of Jupiter, on the pretext that it was too warm for the god in summer, and too cold in winter. Above all things, 'Dionysius the Tyrant desired to be a poet, but again and again he was bitterly disappointed when his verses gained no prize in the competitions held in Greece. He used to send his brother Theodoras to Olympia to repeat his poems ih his name, and at last, when he was sixty-three years old, news reached him that he had been awarded a prize. He was overcome with delight, ordered a banquet to celebrate the occasion, and ate so much that he died during a violent attack of indigestion! So ended the famous Dionysius of Syracuse. All that is left of him to-day is his name and his Ear—still listening in the huge quarry.