However, we
understand one another." At some dangerous crisis the people were
greatly enraged with him, and demanded an account of his conduct as
general. "I hope," said he, "my good friends, that you will save
yourselves first." As the Athenians, when at war, were
humble-spirited, and full of fears, but after peace was made became
bold, and reproached Phokion for having lost them their chance of
victory, he said, "You are fortunate in having a general who
understands you; for if you had not, you would long ago have been
ruined." When the Athenians wished to decide some dispute about
territory by arms instead of by arbitration, Phokion advised them to
fight the Boeotians with words, in which they were superior, not with
arms, in which they were inferior to them. Once when they would not
attend to his words, or listen to him, he said, "You are able to force
me to do what I do not wish, but you shall never force me to counsel
what I do not approve." When Demosthenes, one of the orators of the
opposite party, said to him, "Phokion, the Athenians will kill you, if
they lose their senses." He answered, "Yes, but they will kill you, if
they regain them." When he saw Polyeuktus of Sphettus in a great heat
urging the Athenians to go to war with Philip, panting and sweating
profusely, as he was a very fat man, and drinking great draughts of
water, he said, "Ought you to believe what this man says, and vote for
war? What sort of a figure will he make in a suit of armour and with a
shield to carry, when the enemy are at hand, if he cannot explain his
thoughts to you without nearly choking himself?" When Lykurgus abused
him freely in the public assembly and above all, reproached him with
having advised the people to deliver up ten citizens to Alexander when
he demanded them, he said, "I have often given the people good advice,
but they will not obey me.
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