When these restored citizens thus saw Phokion brought before them, for the first time after their return, the common feeling of antipathy against him burst out into furious manifestations. Agnonides the principal accuser, supported by Epikurus[824] and Demophilus, found their denunciations welcomed and even anticipated, when they arraigned Phokion as a criminal who had lent his hand to the subversion of the constitution,—to the sufferings of his deported fellow-citizens,—and to the holding of Athens in subjection under a foreign potentate; in addition to which, the betrayal of Peiræus to Nikanor[825] constituted a new crime; fastening on the people the yoke of Kassander, when autonomy had been promised to them by the recent imperial edict. After the accusation was concluded, Phokion was called on for his defence; but he found it impossible to obtain a hearing. Attempting several times to speak, he was as often interrupted by angry shouts; several of his friends were cried down in like manner; until at length he gave up the case in despair, and exclaimed, “For myself, Athenians, I plead guilty; I pronounce against myself the sentence of death for my political conduct; but why are you to sentence these men near me, who are not guilty?” “Because they are your friends, Phokion”—was the exclamation of those around. Phokion then said no more; while Agnonides proposed a decree, to the effect, that the assembled people should decide by show of hands, whether the persons now arraigned were guilty or not; and that if declared guilty, they should be put to death. Some persons present cried out, that the penalty of torture ought to precede death; but this savage proposition, utterly at variance with Athenian law in respect to citizens, was repudiated not less by Agnonides than by the Macedonian officer Kleitus. The decree was then passed; after which the show of hands was called for. Nearly every hand in the assembly was held up in condemnation; each man even rose from his seat to make the effect more imposing; and some went so far as to put on wreaths in token of triumph. To many of them doubtless, the gratification of this intense and unanimous vindictive impulse,—in their view not merely legitimate, but patriotic,—must have been among the happiest moments of life.[826]
After sentence, the five condemned persons, Phokion, Nikokles, Thudippus, Hegemon, and Pythokles, were consigned to the supreme magistrates of Police, called The Eleven, and led to prison for the purpose of having the customary dose of poison administered. Hostile bystanders ran alongside, taunting and reviling them. It is even said that one man planted himself in the front, and spat upon Phokion; who turned to the public officers and exclaimed—“Will no one check this indecent fellow?” This was the only emotion which he manifested; in other respects, his tranquillity and self-possession were resolutely maintained, during this soul-subduing march from the theatre to the prison, amidst the wailings of his friends, the broken spirit of his four comrades, and the fiercest demonstrations of antipathy from his fellow-citizens generally. One ray of comfort presented itself as he entered the prison. It was the nineteenth of the month Munychion, the day on which the Athenian Horsemen or Knights (the richest class in the city, men for the most part of oligarchical sentiments) celebrated their festal procession with wreaths on their heads in honor of Zeus. Several of these horsemen halted in passing, took off their wreaths, and wept as they looked through the gratings of the prison.
Being asked whether he had anything to tell his son Phokus, Phokion replied—“I tell him emphatically, not to hold evil memory of the Athenians.” The draught of hemlock was then administered to all five—to Phokion last. Having been condemned for treason, they were not buried in Attica; nor were Phokion’s friends allowed to light a funeral pile for the burning of his body; which was carried out of Attica into the Megarid, by a hired agent named Konopion, and there burnt by fire obtained at Megara. The wife of Phokion, with her maids, poured libations and marked the spot by a small mound of earth; she also collected the bones and brought them back to Athens in her bosom, during the secrecy of night. She buried them near her own domestic hearth, with this address—“Beloved Hestia, I confide to thee these relics of a good man. Restore them to his own family vault, as soon as the Athenians shall come to their senses.”[827]
After a short time (we are told by Plutarch) the Athenians did thus come to their senses. They discovered that Phokion had been a faithful and excellent public servant, repented of their severity towards him, celebrated his funeral obsequies at the public expense, erected a statue in his honor, and put to death Agnonides by public judicial sentence; while Epikurus and Demophilus fled from the city and were slain by Phokion’s son.[828]
These facts are ostensibly correct; but Plutarch omits to notice the real explanation of them. Within two or three months after the death of Phokion, Kassander, already in possession of Peiræus and Munychia, became also master of Athens; the oligarchical or Phokionic party again acquired predominance; Demetrius the Phalerean was recalled from exile, and placed to administer the city under Kassander, as Phokion had administered it under Antipater.
No wonder, that under such circumstances, the memory of Phokion should be honored. But this is a very different thing from spontaneous change of popular opinion respecting him. I see no reason why such change of opinion should have occurred, nor do I believe that it did occur. The Demos of Athens, banished and deported in mass, had the best ground for hating Phokion, and were not likely to become ashamed of the feeling. Though he was personally mild and incorruptible, they derived no benefit from these virtues. To them it was of little moment that he should steadily refuse all presents from Antipater, when he did Antipater’s work gratuitously. Considered as a judicial trial, the last scene of Phokion before the people in the theatre is nothing better than a cruel imposture; considered as a manifestation of public opinion already settled, it is one for which the facts of the past supplied ample warrant.
We cannot indeed read without painful sympathy the narrative of an old man above eighty,—personally brave, mild, and superior to all pecuniary temptation, so far as his positive administration was concerned,—perishing under an intense and crushing storm of popular execration. But when we look at the whole case—when we survey, not merely the details of Phokion’s administration, but the grand public objects which those details subserved, and towards which he conducted his fellow-citizens—we shall see that this judgment is fully merited. In Phokion’s patriotism—for so doubtless he himself sincerely conceived it—no account was taken of Athenian independence; of the autonomy or self-management of the Hellenic world; of the conditions, in reference to foreign kings, under which alone such autonomy could exist. He had neither the Panhellenic sentiment of Aristeides, Kallikratidas, and Demosthenes—nor the narrower Athenian sentiment, like the devotion of Agesilaus to Sparta, and of Epaminondas to Thebes. To Phokion it was indifferent whether Greece was an aggregate of autonomous cities, with Athens as first or second among them—or one of the satrapies under the Macedonian kings. Now this was among the most fatal defects of a Grecian public man. The sentiment in which Phokion was wanting, lay at the bottom of all those splendid achievements which have given to Greece a substantive and pre-eminent place in the history of the world. Had Themistokles, Arsiteides, and Leonidas resembled him, Greece would have passed quietly under the dominion of Persia, and the brilliant, though checkered, century and more of independent politics which succeeded the repulse of Xerxes would never have occurred. It was precisely during the fifty years of Phokion’s political and military influence, that the Greeks were degraded from a state of freedom, and Athens from ascendency as well as freedom, into absolute servitude. Insofar as this great public misfortune can be imputed to any one man—to no one was it more ascribable than to Phokion. He was stratêgus during most of the long series of years when Philip’s power was growing; it was his duty to look ahead for the safety of his countrymen, and to combat the yet immature giant. He heard the warnings of Demosthenes, and he possessed exactly those qualities which were wanting to Demosthenes—military energy and aptitude. Had he lent his influence to inform the short-sightedness, to stimulate the inertia, to direct the armed efforts, of his countrymen, the kings of Macedon might have been kept within their own limits, and the future history of Greece might have been altogether different. Unfortunately, he took the opposite side. He acted with Æschines and the Philippizers; without receiving money from Philip, he did gratuitously all that Philip desired— by nullifying and sneering down the efforts of Demosthenes and the other active politicians. After the battle of Chæroneia, Phokion received from Philip first, and from Alexander afterwards, marks of esteem not shown towards any other Athenian. This was both the fruit and the proof of his past political action—anti-Hellenic as well as anti-Athenian. Having done much, in the earlier part of his life, to promote the subjugation of Greece under the Macedonian kings, he contributed somewhat, during the latter half, to lighten the severity of their dominion; and it is the most honorable point in his character that he always refrained from abusing their marked favor towards himself, for purposes either of personal gain or of oppression over his fellow-citizens. Alexander not only wrote letters to him, even during the plenitude of imperial power, in terms of respectful friendship, but tendered to him the largest presents—at one time the sum of 100 talents, at another time the choice of four towns on the coast of Asia Minor, as Xerxes gave to Themistokles. He even expressed his displeasure when Phokion, refusing everything, consented only to request the liberation of three Grecian prisoners confined at Sardis.[829]
The Lamian war and its consequences, were Phokion’s ruin. He continued at Athens, throughout that war, freely declaring his opinion against it; for it is to be remarked, that in spite of his known macedonizing politics, the people neither banished nor degraded him, but contented themselves with following the counsels of others. On the disastrous termination of the war, Phokion undertook the thankless and dishonorable function of satrap under Antipater at Athens, with the Macedonian garrison at Munychia to back him. He became the subordinate agent of a conqueror who not only slaughtered the chief Athenian orators, but disfranchised and deported the Demos in mass. Having accepted partnership and responsibility in these proceedings, Phokion was no longer safe except under the protection of a foreign prince. After the liberal proclamation issued in the name of the Macedonian kings, permitting the return of the banished Demos, he sought safety for himself, first by that treasonable connivance which enabled Nikanor to seize the Peiræus, next by courting Polysperchon the enemy of Nikanor. A voluntary expatriation (along with his friend the Phalerean Demetrius) would have been less dangerous, and less discreditable, than these manœuvres, which still farther darkened the close of his life, without averting from him, after all, the necessity of facing the restored Demos. The intense and unanimous wrath of the people against him is an instructive, though a distressing spectacle. It was directed, not against the man or the administrator—for in both characters Phokion had been blameless, except as to the last collusion with Nikanor in the seizure of the Peiræus—but against his public policy. It was the last protest of extinct Grecian freedom, speaking as it were from the tomb in a voice of thunder, against that fatal system of mistrust, inertia, self-seeking, and corruption, which had betrayed the once autonomous Athens to a foreign conqueror.
I have already mentioned that Polysperchon with his army was in Phokis when Phokion was brought before him, on his march towards Peloponnesus. Perhaps he may have been detained by negotiation with the Ætolians, who embraced his alliance.[830] At any rate he was tardy in his march, for before he reached Attica, Kassander arrived at Peiræus to join Nikanor with a fleet of thirty-five ships and 4000 soldiers obtained from Antigonus. On learning this fact, Polysperchon hastened his march also, and presented himself under the walls of Athens and Peiræus with a large force of 20,000 Macedonians, 4000 Greek allies, 1000 cavalry, and sixty-five elephants; animals which were now seen for the first time in European Greece. He at first besieged Kassander in Peiræus, but finding it difficult to procure subsistence in Attica for so numerous an army, he marched with the larger portion into Peloponnesus, leaving his son Alexander with a division to make head against Kassander. Either approaching in person the various Peloponnesian towns—or addressing them by means of envoys—he enjoined the subversion of the Antipatrian oligarchies, and the restoration of liberty and free speech to the mass of the citizens.[831] In most of the towns, this revolution was accomplished; but in Megalopolis, the oligarchy held out; not only forcing Polysperchon to besiege the city, but even defending it against him successfully. He made two or three attempts to storm it, by movable towers, by undermining the walls, and even by the aid of elephants; but he was repulsed in all of them,[832] and obliged to relinquish the siege with considerable loss of reputation. His admiral Kleitus was soon afterwards defeated in the Propontis, with the loss of his whole fleet, by Nikanor (whom Kassander had sent from Peiræus) and Antigonus.[833]
After these two defeats, Polysperchon seems to have evacuated Peloponnesus, and to have carried his forces across the Corinthian Gulf into Epirus, to join Olympias. His party was greatly weakened all over Greece, and that of Kassander proportionally strengthened. The first effect of this was, the surrender of Athens. The Athenians in the city, including all or many of the restored exiles, could no longer endure that complete severance from the sea, to which the occupation of Peiræus and Munychia by Kassander had reduced them. Athens without a port was hardly tenable; in fact, Peiræus was considered by its great constructor, Themistokles, as more indispensable to the Athenians than Athens itself.[834] The subsistence of the people was derived in large proportion from imported corn, received through Peiræus; where also the trade and industrial operations were carried on, most of the revenue collected, and the arsenals, docks, ships, etc. of the state kept up. It became evident that Nikanor, by seizing on the Peiræus, had rendered Athens disarmed and helpless; so that the irreparable mischief done by Phokion, in conniving at that seizure, was felt more and more every day. Hence the Athenians, unable to capture the port themselves, and hopeless of obtaining it through Polysperchon, felt constrained to listen to the partisans of Kassander, who proposed that terms should be made with him. It was agreed that they should become friends and allies of Kassander; that they should have full enjoyment of their city, with the port Peiræus, their ships and revenues; that the exiles and deported citizens should be readmitted; that the political franchise should for the future be enjoyed by all citizens who possessed 1000 drachmæ of property and upwards; that Kassander should hold Munychia with a governor and garrison, until the war against Polysperchon was brought to a close; and that he should also name some one Athenian citizen, in whose hands the supreme government of the city should be vested. Kassander named Demetrius the Phalerean (i. e. an Athenian of the Deme Phalerum), one of the colleagues of Phokion; who had gone into voluntary exile since the death of Antipater, but had recently returned.[835]