Plutarch, a Greek biographer, wrote Parallel Lives: paired lives of Greeks and Romans that look at character, virtue, and vice. This is the life of Timoleon of Corinth, a city in southern Greece. Plutarch pairs him with Aemilius Paulus, a Roman: two men who won without needing to keep the crown.

Timoleon killed his own brother when the man made himself tyrant, a one-man ruler, then sat in grief until Corinth asked him to free Syracuse, the great Greek city in Sicily. He sailed with a handful of ships, pulled the tyrant Dionysius down from the citadel, and faced Carthage, based in what is now Tunisia, on the river Crimisus until the water ran red. The lesser despots of Sicily fell one by one. Blind in old age, Timoleon was led into the assembly to be heard, not to rule, and sat in the theatre as a private citizen.