Phocion was an Athenian politician and general in the fourth century bce at a time when Greek states were having to come to terms with the growing power of Macedon. Although he allegedly held the office of general many times, little is known of his career until he reached his sixties and even then our knowledge is patchy. All this changes with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 and the failed Greek uprising that followed. Phocion, now around 80, brokered a peace with the Macedonian regent Antipater. This deal put Phocion in effective charge of an oligarchic government in Athens, oligarchic in that citizenship was limited to those possessing property valued at over 2,000 drachmas. Unfortunately for Phocion, the death of Antipater not long afterwards left him without a backer and stuck between two quarreling Macedonian warlords and a discontented, disenfranchised demos. The result was Phocion’s overthrow and execution in 318.
Martin’s biography is a readable account aimed at a non-specialist audience; throughout he offers helpful explanations of the idiosyncrasies of Athenian history and society while including only very selective endnotes. As my summary hints, the nature of the evidence poses serious challenges for any biographer. Had Phocion died in his seventies, his impact on the historiographical tradition would have been minimal. As it is, the evidence that does survive, even if it is preserved in what is ostensibly a biography, is skewed toward those later years. The Roman author Cornelius Nepos included Phocion in his Lives of Great Generals of Foreign Nations but undercut that inclusion by claiming that no one remembers any of Phocion’s military achievements before skipping almost immediately to his downfall. Our best authority is Plutarch’s Life of Phocion, written over 400 years later, but even he struggled to find material to fill out the early part of his subject’s life.
This obstacle does not stop Martin including chapters on childhood, teenage years, and military training. In practice what Martin offers here is an account of the upbringing of the child of a typical affluent upper-class Athenian family. Phocion is kept in the picture by imagining how he might have responded to what was around him as he grew up (e.g. death, slavery, and freedom). At times this goes too far as Martin speculates how these imagined responses may have shaped the older Phocion. Looking around himself as a child, we are told, he would have realized “the fragile mortality of human beings,” both men and women. This leads to the conclusion: “Phocion’s inevitable awareness of this melancholy truth was likely a strong motivation for his insistence as an adult that Athenians must minimize their risk when conducting international relations in a world that had dramatically changed in ways dangerously not to their advantage” (p. 19). This observation introduces a key element in Martin’s characterization of the political stance of his subject, but explaining it through an imagined childhood is unnecessary and unsatisfactory.
For Martin, Phocion represents an opportunity not just to examine the life of an Athenian politician but also to ask questions about democracy, both then and now. He asks, in particular, how democracy can cope with a highly polarized society. Martin has in mind especially the United States at the time of writing (2023), and his concerns are even more relevant in 2025. He sees Phocion as “a well-meaning but flawed protagonist” (p. 10), deeply loyal to Athens but too aloof and disdainful of the populace. Martin emphasizes the need for successful politicians to show that they share and understand the feelings of the people. Phocion may have often been right in his assessments, but he lived as a man apart, lecturing the people and pointing out their shortcomings in a brusque and confrontational manner. Throughout Martin stresses the need to belong to the community and Phocion’s failure to do this.
Plutarch’s Life includes many sayings of Phocion, usually pointed criticism of the demos and his opponents, reported without adequate regard for historical context. Martin largely accepts these sayings and cites them in support of his characterization of Phocion, although not all scholars have been so willing to accept them. Given how little is known of Phocion’s life, it seems unduly optimistic to think we can have faith in the authenticity of these dicta. Certainly, caution is needed.
The ongoing and deep divisions in Athenian society that Martin highlights also call into question the overall reliability of the ancient portrait of Phocion. His oligarchy (or moderate democracy, according to some) was replaced by a short-lived democratic constitution that was in turn overthrown and replaced by another oligarchic (or moderately democratic) constitution that could be represented as a more generous version of Phocion’s. It should be pointed out that, while Aristotle may have distinguished between oligarchies and democracies, politicians did not tend to announce themselves as oligarchs.
The new Macedonian-backed government under Demetrius of Phalerum that came to power in 317 sought to rehabilitate Phocion; he was given a state funeral and honored with a bronze statue. Such a rewriting of recent history needed a story to justify it. It is likely that it was at this point that the comparison developed between Phocion and another victim of Athenian democracy, the philosopher Socrates. All this suggests that Phocion may be an even more elusive figure than Martin would like, but he remains, as Martin puts it, “good to think with” (p. 10).
