Plutarch wrote Parallel Lives, paired Greek and Roman biographies of character, virtue, and vice. This life is Phocion, an Athenian soldier and politician in the city we still call Athens, in Greece. Plutarch sets him beside Cato the Younger: two men who would not flatter a free city as it failed. You can land here without the other lives.

Phocion, called the Good, told the Athenians the truth until they killed him for it. He opposed Demosthenes, the orator who pushed for war, held commands without theft, and lived so simply the speechmakers looked expensive. After Alexander the Great he tried to keep Athens small and alive. When the people ruled again they gave him hemlock, the poison Socrates had drunk; he reminded them of that. His bones were thrown out unburied, then brought home when the mood turned. Honesty here is a long, unwelcome speech.