" When
all his friends had drunk, the poison ran short, and the executioner
refused to prepare any more unless he were paid twelve drachmas, the
price of that weight of hemlock. After a long delay, Phokion called
one of his friends to him, and, saying that it was hard if a man could
not even die gratis at Athens, bade him give the man the money he
wanted.
XXXVII. The day of Phokion's death was the nineteenth of the month
Munychion,[651] and the knights rode past the prison in solemn
procession to the temple of Zeus. Some of them took off their garlands
from their heads, while others came in tears to the gates of the
prison and looked in. All whose better feelings were not utterly
overpowered by passion and hatred agreed in thinking it a very
indecent proceeding not to have waited one day for the execution, and
so to have avoided the pollution of the festival by the death of the
prisoners. Moreover, the enemies of Phokion, as if they had not even
yet satisfied their spite, passed a decree excluding his body from
burial, and forbidding any Athenian to furnish fire to burn it. In
consequence of this, no one of his friends dared to touch the body,
but one Konopion, a man who was accustomed to deal with such cases for
hire, conveyed the body beyond Eleusis, obtained fire from Megara over
the Attic frontier, and burned it. Phokion's wife, who was present
with her maids, raised an empty tomb[652] on the spot, placed the
bones in her bosom, and carried them by night into her own house,
where she buried them beside the hearth, saying, "To thee, dear
hearth, I entrust these remains of a good man; do you restore them to
his fathers' tomb when the Athenians recover their senses.
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