Phocion

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.