Phocion

However, when Charicles was brought to trial for his dealings with Harpalus, and begged Phocion to help him and go with him into the court-room, Phocion refused, saying: I made thee my son-in-law, Charicles, for none but just purposes. Asclepiades the son of Hipparchus was the first one to bring to the Athenians the tidings that Alexander was dead. Thereupon Demades urged them to pay no heed to the report, since, had it been true, the whole earth would long ago have been filled with the stench of the body. But Phocion, who saw that the people were bent on revolution, tried to dissuade them and restrain them.

And when many of them sprang towards the bema, and shouted that the tidings brought by Asclepiades were true and that Alexander was dead, Well, then, said Phocion, if he is dead to-day, he will be dead to-morrow and the day after. Therefore we can deliberate in quiet, and with greater safety.

Leosthenes, who had plunged the city into the Lamian war[*](323-322 B.C. So named because the confederate Greeks held Antipater and his forces for some time besieged in Lamia, a city of S. E. Thessaly (§ 4).) much to Phocion’s displeasure, once asked him derisively what good he had done the city during the many years in which he had been general. No slight good, said Phocion, in that its citizens are buried in their own sepulchres.

Again, when Leosthenes was talking very boldly and boastfully in the assembly, Phocion said: Thy speeches, young man, are like cypress-trees, which are large and towering, but bear no fruit. And when Hypereides confronted him with the question, When, then, O Phocion, wilt thou counsel the Athenians to go to war? Whenever, said Phocion, I see the young men willing to hold their places in the ranks, the rich to make contributions, and the orators to keep their thievish hands away from the public moneys.

When many were admiring the force got together by Leosthenes, and were asking Phocion what he thought of the city’s preparations, They are good, said he, for the short course;[*](The short course in the foot-races was straight away, the length of the stadium; the long course was ten times back and forth.) but it is the long course which I fear in the war, since the city has no other moneys, or ships, or men-at-arms.