Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/359

 PHOCION. 351 came to Attica, and there was a perfect race among the ordinary public men of the assembly who should be the first to take his pay, he distributed amongst these some trifling sums by way of a bait and provocative, but to Phocion he made an offer of no less than seven hundred talents and all manner of other advantages he pleased to demand ; with the compliment that he would entirely commit himself and all his affairs to his disposal. Pho- cion answered sharply, Harpalus should repent of it, if he did not quickly leave off corrupting and debauching the city, which for the time silenced him, and checked his pro- ceedings. But afterwards, when the Athenians were de- liberating in council about him, he found those that had received money from him to be his greatest enemies, urg- ing and aggravating matters against him, to prevent them- selves being discovered, whereas Phocion, who had never touched his pay, now, so far as the public interest would admit of it, showed some regard to his particular security. This encouraged him once more to try his inclinations, and upon farther survey, finding that he himself was a for- tress, inaccessible on every quarter to the approaches of corruption, he professed a particular friendship to Pho- cion's son-in-law, Charicles. And admitting him into his confidence in all his affairs, and continually requesting his assistance, he brought him into some suspicion. Upon the occasion, for example, of the death of Pythonice, who was Harpalus's mistress, for whom he had a great fondness, and had a child by her, he resolved to build her a sump- tuous monument, and committed the care of it to his friend Charicles. This commission, disreputable enough in itself, was yet further disparaged by the figure the piece of workmanship made after it was finished. It is yet to be seen in the Hermeum,* as you go from Athens bus, says Pausanias, who does not monument the most remarkable of mention the temple or sacred all the antiquities of Greece.
 * Soon after crossing the Cephi- ground of Hermes, but calls the