Phocion

Alexander was vexed and wrote back to Phocion that he could not regard as his friends those who wanted nothing of him. But not even then would Phocion take the money; he did, however, ask for the release of Echecratides the sophist, Athenodorus of Imbros, and two men of Rhodes, Demaratus and Sparton, who had been arrested upon sundry charges and imprisoned in Sardis.

These men, then, Alexander set free at once, and at a later time,[*](In 324 B.C., when Craterus was commissioned to lead the veteran soldiers of Alexander back to Macedonia. See the Alexander, chapter lxxi.) when he sent Craterus back into Macedonia, he ordered him to turn over to Phocion the revenues from whichever one of four cities in Asia he might select,—either Cius, Gergithus, Mylasa, or Elaea,—insisting still more strongly than before that he would be angry if Phocion did not take them. But Phocion would not take them, and very soon Alexander died. And even to the present day Phocion’s house is pointed out in Melité,[*](A deme, or ward, in the S. W. part of Athens. See the Themistocles, xxii. 2.) adorned with bronze disks, but otherwise plain and simple.

As for his wives, nothing is told us about the first, except that she was a sister of Cephisodotus the sculptor; but the reputation which the second had among the Athenians for sobriety and simplicity was not less than that of Phocion for probity.

And once when the Athenians were witnessing an exhibition of new tragedies, the actor who was to take the part of a queen asked the choregus to furnish him with a great number of attendant women in expensive array; and when he could not get them, he was indignant, and kept the audience waiting by his refusal to come out. But the choregus, Melanthius, pushed him before the spectators, crying: Dost thou not see that Phocion’s wife always goes out with one maid-servant? Thy vanity will be the undoing of our women-folk.

His words were plainly heard by the audience, and were received with tumultuous applause. And this very wife, when an Ionian woman who was her guest displayed ornaments of gold and precious stones worked into collars and necklaces, said: My ornament is Phocion, who is now for the twentieth year a general of Athens.