PHOCION
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rmanves, the orator, when in the height of the power which heobtained at Athens, by advising the state in the interest of Anti-pater and the Macedonians, being necessitated to write andspeak many things below the dignity, and contrary to thecharacter, of the city, was wont to excuse himself by saying hesteered only the shipwrecks of the commonwealth. This hardysaying of his might have some appearance of truth, if applied toPhocion’s government. For Demades, indeed, was himself themere wreck of his country, living and ruling so dissolutely, that__ Antipater took occasion to say of him, when he was now grownold, that he was like a sacrificed beast, all consumed except thetongue and the belly. But Phocion’s was a real virtue, onlyovermatched in the unequal contest with an adverse time, andrendered, by the ill fortunes of Greece, inglorious and obscure.We must not, indeed, allow ourselves to concur with Sophoclesin so far diminishing the force of virtue as to say that— “When fortune fails, the sense we had beforeDeserts us also, and is ours no more.’ Yet thus much, indeed, must be allowed to happen in the con-_ flicts between good men and ill fortune, that instead of due returns of honour and gratitude, obloquy and unjust surmisesmay often prevail, to weaken, in a considerable degree, thecredit of their virtue. It is commonly said that public bodies are most insulting andcontumelious to a good man, when they are puffed up withprosperity and success. But the contrary often happens; afflic-tions and public calamities naturally embittering and souringthe minds and tempers of men, and disposing them to suchpeevishness and irritability that ‘hardly any word or sentimentof common vigour can be addressed to them, but they will beapt to take offence. He that remonstrates with them om their “MIT 499
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