28 Plutarch’s Lives
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fter the assembly was dismissed, they were carried to theprison; the rest with cries and lamentations, their friends andrelatives following and clinging about them, but Phocion looking(as men observed with astonishment at his calmness and magna-nimity), just the same as when he had been used to return tohis home attended, as general, from the assembly. His enemiesran along by his side, reviling and abusing him. And one ofthem coming up to him, spat in his face; at which Phocion,turning to the officers, only said, “ You should stop this in-decency.” Thudippus, on their reaching the prison, when heobserved the executioner tempering the poison and preparing it~for them, gave away to his passion, and began to bemoan hiscondition and the hard measure he received, thus unjustly tosuffer with Phocion. “‘ You cannot be contented,” said he, “ todie with Phocion?”’ One of his friends that stood by, askedhim if he wished to have anything said to his son. “ Yes, byall means,” said he, “bid him bear no grudge against theAthenians.” Then Nicocles, the dearest and most faithful ofhis friends, begged to be allowed to drink the poison first. “Myfriend,” said he, “ you ask what I am loath and sorrowful to —give, but as I never yet in all my life was so thankless as torefuse you, I must gratify you in this also.” After they had alldrunk of it, the poison ran short; and the executioner refusedto prepare more, except they would pay him twelve drachmas,to defray the cost of the quantity required. Some delay wasmade, and time spent, when Phocion called one of his friends,and observing that a man could not even die at Athens withoutpaying for it, requested him to give the sum. It was the nineteenth day of the month Munychion, on whichit was the usage to have a solemn procession in the city, inhonour of Jupiter. The horsemen, as they passed by, some ofthem threw away their garlands, others stopped, weeping, andcasting sorrowful looks towards the prison doors, and all thecitizens whose minds were not absolutely debauched by spite andpassion, or who had any humanity left, acknowledged it to havebeen most impiously done, not, at least, to let that day pass,and the city so be kept pure from death and a public executionat the solemn festival. But as if this triumph had been in-sufficient, the malice of Phocion’s enemies went yet further; hisdead body was excluded from burial within the boundaries ofthe country, and none of the Athenians could light a funeralpile to burn the corpse; neither durst any of his friends ventureto concern themselves about it. A certain Conopion, a man
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