thenian general and statesman, a disciple
of Plato and Xenocrates; was wise in council as well as brave in war;
opposed to the democracy of Athens, led on by Demosthenes in the frantic
ambition of coping with Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander; and pled
for a pacific arrangement with them; but having opposed war with
Antipater, the successor of the latter, he was accused of treason, and
condemned to drink hemlock; the Athenians afterwards repented of the
crime, raised a bronze statue to his memory, and condemned his accuser to
death.

PHOCIS, a province of ancient Greece, W. of Boeotia, and N. of the
Gulf of Corinth; was traversed by the mountain range of Parnassus, and
contained the oracle of Apollo at Delphi; allied to Athens in the
Peloponnesian War, the Phocians were crushed in the "Sacred War" after
ten years' fighting by Philip of Macedon, 346 B.C.

PHOEBUS (i. e. the radiant one), an epithet originally applied to
Apollo for his beauty, and eventually to him as the sun-god.

PHOENICIA, a country on the E. shore of the Levant, stretching
inland to Mount Lebanon, at first extending only 20 m. N. of Palestine,
but later embracing 200 m. of coast, with the towns of Tyre, Zarephath,
Sidon, Gebal, and Arvad. The country comprised well-wooded hills and
fertile plains, was rich in natural resources, richer still in a people
of remarkable industry and enterprise. Of Semitic stock, they emerge from
history with Sidon as ruling city about 1500 B.C., and reach their
zenith under Tyre 1200-750, thereafter declining, and ultimately merging
in the Roman Empire. During their prosperity their manufactures, purple
dye, glass ware, and metal implements were in demand everywhere; they
were the traders of the world, their nautical skill and geographical
position making their markets the centres of exchange between East and
West; their ships sailed every sea, and carried the merchandise of every
country, and their colonists settled all over the Mediterranean, AEgean,
and Euxine, and even beyond the Pillars of Hercules, in Africa, in
Britain, and the countries on the Baltic. Her greatest colony was
Carthage, the founding of which (823 B.C.) sapped the strength of the
mother-country, and which afterwards usurped her place, and contended
with Rome for the mastery of the world. But Phoenicia's greatest gift to
civilisation was the alphabet, which she herself may have developed from
Egyptian hieroglyphics, and which, with its g