Thomas Martin’s newest book, Phocion: Good Citizen in a Divided Democracy, tells the story of Phocion the Good (401-318 B.C.), a lesser-known Athenian statesman who served his city with distinction as a general and politician in the final decades of classical Greece. Phocion was celebrated in his day for his courage, good judgment, and virtue (read: severe austerity), but in the intervening millennia he has more or less faded into obscurity, except for a brief period of renewed interest during the enlightenment when his life was understood as a cautionary tale of the dangers of Athens-style direct participatory democracy.
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