Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/341

 PHOCION. 333 austerity on the other; their boldness upon some occa- sions, and caution on others; their extreme solicitude for the public, and perfect neglect of themselves ; their fixed aud immovable bent to all virtuous and honest actions, accompanied with an extreme tenderness and scrupulosity as to doing any thing which might appear mean or unworthy ; so that we should need a very nice and subtle logic of discrimination co detect and establish the distinctions between them. As to Cato's extraction, it is confessed by all to have been illustrious, as will be said hereafter, nor was Pho- cion's, I feel assured, obscure or ignoble. For had he been the son of a turner, as Idomeneus reports, it had certainly not been forgotten to his disparagement by Glaucippus, the son of Hyperides, when heaping up a thousand spiteful things to say against him. Nor, indeed, had it been possible for him, in such circumstances, to have had such a liberal breeding and education in his 3011th, as to be first Plato's, and afterwards Xenocrates's scholar in the Academy, and to have devoted himself from the first to the pursuit of the noblest studies and prac- tices. His countenance was so composed, that scarcely was he ever seen by any Athenian either laughing, or in tears. He was rarely known, so Duris has recorded, to appear in the public baths, or was observed with his hand exposed outside his cloak, when he wore one. Abroad, and in the camp, he was so hardy in going always thin clad and barefoot, except in a time of excessive and in- tolerable cold, that the soldiers used to say in merriment, that it was like to be a hard winter when Phocion wore his coat. Although he was most gentle and humane in his dispo- sition, his aspect was stern and forbidding, so that he was seldom accosted alone by any who were not intimate with him. When Chares once made some remark on his