Athens executed Phocion at about 80, banned his burial in Attica, and Plutarch says his wife buried his bones under her hearth

Phocion was an Athenian general in his eighties when the restored democracy condemned him. Nepos says he was sentenced to death without being allowed to plead. Plutarch says the hemlock ran short and the executioner refused to mix more without payment. Phocion had a friend pay the 12 drachmas, saying that at Athens a man could not even die without paying. His last message to his son Phocus was to bear the Athenians no grudge. He died on 19 Munychion, early May 318 BC. His enemies passed a decree that his body be carried out of Attica and that no Athenian light a fire for his funeral. A hired man, Conopion, carried the body past Eleusis, took fire from Megarian territory and burned it. Nepos says no free man dared bury him and slaves did it. Plutarch says the woman who was there with her maidservants, in Perrin's translation his wife, heaped up an empty tomb and poured libations. She carried the bones home at night against her body and buried them by the hearth, asking it to keep them until the Athenians came to their senses. Plutarch says a short time later the Athenians set up a bronze statue of Phocion and gave his bones a public burial. They put his accuser Hagnonides to death.