Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/373

 PHOCION. 365 and seated the king and his company under it, ordered Dinarchus at once to be taken, and tortured, and put to death ; and that done, gave audience to the Athenians, who filled the place with noise and tumult, accusing and recriminating on one another, till at last Agnonides came forward, and requested they might all be shut up together in .one cage, and conveyed to Athens, there to decide the controversy. At that the king could not forbear smiling, but the company that attended, for their own amusement, Macedonians and strangers, were eager to hear the alter- cation, and made signs to the delegates to go on with their case at once. But it was no sort of fair hearing. Polysperchon frequently interrupted Phocion, till at last Phocion struck his staff on the ground, and declined to speak further. And when Hegemon said, Polysperchon himself could bear witness to his affection for the people, Polysperchon called out fiercely, " Give over slandering me to the king," and the king starting up was about to have run him through with his javelin, but Polysperchon interposed and hindered him ; so that the assembly dis- solved. Phocion, then, and those about him, were seized ; those of his friends that were not immediately by him, on see- ing this, hid their faces, and saved themselves by flight. The rest Clitus took and brought to Athens, to be submitted to trial ; but, in truth, as men already sen- tenced to die. The manner of conveying them was indeed extremely moving; they were carried in chariots through the Ceramicus, straight to the place of judica- ture, where Clitus secured them till they had convoked an assembly of the people, which was open to all comers, neither foreigners, nor slaves, nor those who had been punished with disfranchisement, being refused admit- tance, but all alike, both men and women, being allowed to come into the court, and even upon the place of speak-