Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/360

352 PHOCION. to Eleusis, with nothing in its appearance answerable to the sum of thirty talents, with which Charicles is said to have charged Harpalus for its erection. After Har- palus's own decease, his daughter was educated by Pho- cion and Charicles with great care. But when Charicles was called to account for his dealings with Harpalus, and entreated his father-in-law's protection, begging that he would appear for him in the court, Phocion refused, tell- ing him, "I did not choose you for my son-in-law for any but honorable purposes." Asclepiades, the son of Hipparchus, brought the first tidings of Alexander's death to Athens, which Demades told them was not to be credited ; for, were it true, the whole world would ere this have stunk with the dead body. But Phocion seeing the people eager for an in- stant revolution, did his best to quiet and repress them. And when numbers of them rushed up to the hustings to speak, and cried out that the news was true, and Alexan- der was dead, " If he is dead to-day," said he, " he will be so to-morrow and the day after to-morrow equally. So that there is no need to take counsel hastily or before it is safe." When Leosthenes now had embarked the city in the Lamian war, greatly against Phocion's wishes, to raise a laugh against Phocion, he asked him scoffingly, what the State had been benefited by his having now so many years been general. "It is not a little," said Phocion, " that the citizens have been buried in their own sepul- chres." And when Leosthenes continued to speak boldly and boastfully in the assembly, "Young man," he said, " your speeches are like cypress-trees, stately and tall, and no fruit to come of them." And when he was then attacked by Hyperides, who asked him when the time would come, that he would advise the Athenians to make war, « As soon," said he, " as I find the young men keep