Editing Timoleon (section)

== Historical analysis==
The ancient historian [[Timaeus (historian)|Timaeus]] praised Timoleon. Polybius, an ancient historian with oligarchic sympathies, said Timaeus was biased in favour of Timoleon and many modern historians have agreed with Polybius.<ref>Peter Green, ''Alexander to Actium'' p. 219.</ref> Peter Green said that Timoleon tended to pose as a democrat while using the methods of a tyrant (albeit benevolently), and that Timoleon tried to maintain the outward forms of democracy, reformed Syracuse in a democratic direction, and demolished the stronghold of the island that had been useful to tyrants in the past.<ref>Peter Green, ''Alexander to Actium'', pp. 219-20.</ref>

When taken to court on spurious grounds, Timoleon refused to be exempted, saying that this was the "precise purpose for which he had so long laboured and combated—in order that every Syracusan citizen might be enabled to appeal to the laws and exercise freely his legal rights."<ref name=":1" />

The historian George Grote agreed with a eulogy given by a Syracusan at Timoleon's funeral, about three years after the Crimissus victory:<ref name=":1" /><blockquote>The Syracusan people solemnise, at the cost of 200 [[Mina (unit)|minae]], the funeral of this man . . .They have passed a vote to honour him for all future time. . .,—because, after having put down the despots, subdued the foreign enemy, and re-colonised the greatest among the ruined cities, he restored to the Sicilian Greeks their constitution and laws.</blockquote>