XXXVIII.  After a short time, however, when circumstances had taught them what a protector and guardian of virtue they had lost, the Athenians set up a brazen statue of Phokion, and gave his remains a public burial.  They themselves condemned and executed Hagnonides, while Phokion’s son followed Epikurus and Demophilus, who fled the country, discovered their place of refuge, and avenged himself upon them.  He is said to have been far from respectable in character; and once, when attached to a common prostitute, who was the slave of a brothel-keeper, he happened to attend one of the lectures of Theodorus, who was surnamed “the atheist,” in the Lyceum.  As he heard him say that “if it be noble to ransom one’s male friends from captivity, it must be equally so to ransom one’s female friends; and that, if it be right for a man to set free the man whom he loves, it must be his duty to do likewise to the woman whom he loves,” he determined to use this argument for the gratification of his own passion, and to conclude that the philosopher bade him purchase the freedom of his mistress.

The treatment of Phokion reminded the Greeks of that of Sokrates, as both the crime and the misfortune of the city in both cases was almost exactly the same.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 622:  Cic. ad Att. ii. 1.  Dicit enim tanquam in Platonis [Greek:  politeia] non tanquam in faece Romuli sententiam.  I have translated Plutarch literally, though I have no doubt that the occasion to which he alludes (which is not mentioned by Cicero, l.c.) is that of the election to the praetorship, B.C. 55, when the worthless adventurer Vatinius was preferred to Cato.  M. Cato in petitione praeturae, praelato Vatinio, repulsam tulit.  Liv.  Epit. cv.  See also Val.  Max. vii. 5, and Merivale’s ‘History of the Romans,’ vol. i. ch. ix.

The word [Greek:  hupateia] is always used by Plutarch as the Greek equivalent for the Roman title of consul.]

[Footnote 623:  This saying of his is mentioned in the ’Life of Demosthenes,” c. 10.]

[Footnote 624:  He was elected no less than forty-five times to the annual office of Strategus or General of the city—­that is, one of the Board of Ten so denominated, the greatest executive function at Athens.—­Grote, ‘Hist. of Greece,’ Part ii. ch. lxxxvii.]

[Footnote 625:  Meaning, why do you affect to be a Spartan, and yet speak like an Athenian?  See vol. iii.  ‘Life of Kleomenes,’ ch. ix.]

[Footnote 626:  Grote observes, in commenting on this passage, that “Plutarch has no clear idea of the different contests carried on in Euboea.  He passes on, without a note of transition, from this war in the island (in 349-348 B.C.) to the subsequent war in 341 B.C.  Nothing indeed can be more obscure and difficult to disentangle than the sequence of Euboean transactions.”—­’Hist. of Greece,’ Part ii., ch. lxxxviii.]

[Footnote 627:  From Plutarch’s narrative one would imagine that the “enemy” must mean the Macedonians:  but we find that they really were the native Euboeans, led by Kallias of Chalkis, with only a detachment of Macedonians and some Phokian mercenary troops.]