A myth handed down for a long time says that the tyrant of Syracuse Dionysius I (the Elder, ca. 432–367 BC) could understand the speech of war prisoners through a window in the upper part of the innermost wall of the grotto named Ear of Dionysius. Sabine himself who had visited this cave had cast serious doubts on this possibility [1]. Few years ago the authors carried out a set of acoustic measurements to characterize the acoustics of this site known worldwide for its peculiar reverberation [2]. Unfortunately, they could perform only a single measurements of the sound transmission from the floor level of the grotto to the listening spot of the tyrant to estimate a degree of truth of the myth.

This paper reports a numerical study of the acoustics of the Ear of Dionysius aimed at the evaluation of current room-acoustics parameters related to speech intelligibility when a speaker is located at the ground level of the cave and the listener occupies the supposed spot of the tyrant. The room-acoustics simulation was carried out with the aid of the specialized software Odeon.11 [3]. The results of the simulation still suggest reasonable doubts about the possibility the tyrant could understand the speech of prisoners.