Phocion

It was the nineteenth day of the month Munychion,[*](Early in May, 318 B.C.) and the horsemen conducting the procession in honour of Zeus were passing by the prison. Some of them took off their garlands, and others gazed at the door of the prison with tears in their eyes. And it was thought by all those whose souls were not wholly savage and debauched by rage and jealousy, that an impious thing had been done in not waiting over that day, and so keeping the city pure from a public execution when it was holding festival.

However, his enemies, as if their triumph were incomplete, got a decree passed that the body of Phocion should be carried beyond the boundary of the country, and that no Athenian should light a fire for his obsequies. Therefore no friend of his ventured to touch his body, but a certain Conopion, who was wont to perform such services for hire, carried the body beyond Eleusis, took fire from the Megarian territory, and burned it.

The wife of Phocion,[*](Cf. chapter xix.) however, who was present with her maid-servants, heaped up a cenotaph on the spot and poured libations upon it; then, putting the bones in her bosom and carrying them by night to her dwelling, she buried them by the hearth, saying: To thee, dear Hearth, I entrust these remains of a noble man; but do thou restore them to the sepulchre of his fathers, when the Athenians shall have come to their senses.

And indeed, after a short time had passed, and when the course of events was teaching them what a patron and guardian of moderation and justice the people had lost, they set up a statue of him in bronze, and gave his bones a public burial. Moreover, as regards his accusers, the people themselves condemned Hagnonides and put him to death; while Epicurus and Demophilus, who had run away from the city, were found out by Phocion’s son and visited with his vengeance.

This son of Phocion,[*](Cf. chapters xx. and xxx. 1.) we are told, turned out to be a man of no worth in general, and once, being enamoured of a girl who was kept in a brothel, chanced to hear Theodorus the Atheist discourse in the Lyceium as follows: If there is no disgrace in ransoming a man beloved, the same is true of a woman loved; what is true of a comrade, is true also of a mistress. Accordingly, his passion leading him to think the argument sound, he ransomed his mistress. But Phocion’s fate reminded the Greeks anew of that of Socrates;[*](In 399 B.C.) they felt that the sin and misfortune of Athens were alike in both cases.