Phocus was a Boeotian by birth (for he was born in the city of Clisas),
the father of Callirrhoe, who was a virgin of matchless beauty and
modesty, and courted by thirty young gentlemen, the prime of the
Boeotian nobility. Phocus therefore, seeing so many suitors about her,
still pretended one excuse or other to put off her marriage, afraid
lest some force or other should be put upon her. At length, when he
could hold out no longer, the gentlemen being offended at his dilatory
answers, he desired them to refer it to the Pythian Deity to make the
choice. But this the gentlemen took so heinously, that they fell upon
Phocus and slew him. In this combustion and tumult, the virgin making
her escape fled into the country, and was as soon pursued by the young
sparks; but lighting upon certain country people that were piling up
their wheat in a barn, by their assistance she saved herself. For the
countrymen hid her in the corn, so that they who were in chase of her
passed her by. The virgin thus preserved kept herself close till the
general assembly of all the Boeotians; and then coming to Coronea,
she there sat as a suppliant before the altar of Itonian Minerva, and
there gave a full relation of the villany and murder committed by her
several suitors discovering withal the names of the persons, and places
of their abode. The Boeotians commiserating the virgin were no less
incensed against the young gentlemen; who, having notice of what had
passed, fled to Orchomenus, but being shut out by the citizens, made
their escape to Hippotae, a village near to Helicon, seated between
Thebes and Coronea, where they were received and protected. Thither
the Thebans sent to have the murderers of Phocus delivered up; which
the inhabitants refusing to do, they marched against the town with a
good force of other Boeotians under the leading of Phoedus, then the
chief ruler of Thebes. And laying siege to it (for it was a strong
place), at last they took it for want of water; and in the first place
having apprehended all the murderers, they stoned them to death; then
they condemned the inhabitants to perpetual slavery, broke down the
walls, ruined the houses, and divided the land between the Thebans
and Coroneans. The report goes, that the night before Hippotae was
taken, there was a voice heard from Helicon several times uttering
these words, I am come; and that when the thirty rivals heard it, they
knew it to be the voice of Phocus. It was said, moreover, that the
very day the rivals were stoned, the monument of the old man which was
erected in Clisas was covered with drops of saffron. And as Phoedus,
the governor and general of the Thebans, was upon his march homeward
from the siege, news was brought him that his wife had brought him
a daughter, which for the good omen’s sake he called by the name of
Nicostrate.