De exilio

ONE may say of discourses what they use to say of friends, that they are the best and firmest that afford their useful presence and help in calamities. Many indeed present themselves and discourse with those that are fallen into misfortunes, who yet do them more harm than good. Like men that attempt to succor drowning persons and have themselves no skill in diving under water, they entangle one another, and sink together to the bottom. The discourses of friends, such as would help an afflicted person, ought to be directed to the consolation, and not to the patronage of his sorrows. For we have no need in our distresses of such as may bear us company in weeping and howling, like a chorus in a tragedy, but of such as will deal freely with us, and will convince us that,—as it is in all cases vain and foolish and to no purpose to grieve and cast down one’s self,—so, when the things themselves that afflict us, after a rational examination and discovery of what they are, give a man leave to say to himself thus,

Thou feel’st but little pain and smart,

Unless thou’lt feign and act a part,

Let us therefore, when we are alone, question with ourselves concerning the things that have befallen us, considering them as heavy loads. The body, we know, is under pressure by a burden lying upon it; but the soul oft-times adds a further weight of her own to things. A stone is hard and ice is cold by nature, not by any thing from without happening to make such qualities and impressions upon them. But as for banishment and disgraces and loss of honors (and so for their contraries, crowns, chief rule, and precedency of place), our opinion prescribing the measure of our joys or sorrows and not the nature of the things themselves, every man makes them to himself light or heavy, easy to be borne or grievous. You may hear Polynices’s answer to this question,

JOCAST. But say, is’t so deplorable a case

To live in exile from one’s native place?

POLYN. It’s sad indeed; and whatsoe’er you guess,

’Tis worse to endure than any can express.

[*](Eurip. Phoeniss. 388 and 389.)

Sardis, my ancient fatherland,

Hadst thou, by Fate’s supreme command,

My helpless childhood nourished,

I must have begg’d my daily bread,

Or else, a beardless priest become,

Have toss’d Cybele frantic down.

Now Alcman I am call’d—a name

Inscribed in Sparta’s lists of fame,

Whose many tripods record bear

Of solemn wreaths and tripods rare,

Achieved in worship at the shrine

Of Heliconian maids divine,

By whose great aid I’m mounted higher

Than Gyges or his wealthy sire.

[*](This translation is taken from Burges’s Greek Anthology, p. 470. It is there signed J. H. M. (G.))

But let us grant (as many say and sing) that it is a grievous thing to be banished. So there are also many things that we eat, of a bitter, sharp, and biting taste, which yet by a mixture of other things more mild and sweet have all their unpleasantness taken off. There are also some colors troublesome to look upon, which bear so hard and strike so piercingly upon the sight, that they confound and dazzle it; if now by mixing shadows with them, or by turning our eyes upon some green and pleasant color, we remedy this inconvenience, thou mayst also do the same to the afflictions that befall thee, considering them with a mixture of those advantages and benefits thou still enjoyest, as wealth, friends, vacancy from business, and a supply of all things necessary to human life. For I think there are few Sardians but would desire to be in your condition, though banished, and would choose to live as you may do, though in a strange country, rather than—like snails that grow to their shells—enjoy no other good, saving only what they have at home without trouble.

As he therefore in the comedy that advised his unfortunate friend to take heart and to revenge himself of Fortune, being asked which way, answered, By the help of philosophy; so we also may be revenged of her, by acting worthily like philosophers. For what course do we take when it is rainy weather, or a cold north wind blows? We creep to the fireside, or go into a bath, put on more clothes, or go into a dry house; and do not sit still in a shower and cry. It is in thy power above most men’s to revive and cherish that part of thy life which seems to be chill and benumbed, not needing any other helps, but only according to thy best judgment and prudence making use of the things that thou possessest. The cupping-glasses physicians use, by drawing the worst humors out of the body, alleviate and preserve the rest; but they that are prone to grieve and make sad complaints, by mustering together

Wherefore, if we fall into any real evil or calamity, we must bring in what is pleasant and delightful of the remaining good things in our possession, and thus, by what we enjoy at home, mitigate the sense of those evils that befall us from abroad. But where there is no evil in the nature of the things, but the whole of that which afflicts us is framed by imagination and false opinion, in this case we must do just as we deal with children that are apt to be frighted with false faces and vizards; by bringing them nearer, and making them handle and turn then on every side, they are brought at last to despise them; so we, by a nearer touching and fixing our consideration upon our feigned evils, may be able to detect and discover the weakness and vanity of what we fear and so tragically deplore.

Such is your present condition of being banished out of that which you account your country; for nature has given us no country, as it has given us no house or field, no smith’s or apothecary’s shop, as Ariston said; but every one of them is always made or rather called such a man’s by his dwelling in it or making use of it. For man (as Plato says)

Am I of Thebes or Argos? Whether

You please, for I’m content with either;

But to determine one, ’tis pity,

In Greece my country’s every city.

Behold how yonder azure sky,

Extending vastly wide and high

To infinitely distant spaces,

In her soft arms our earth embraces.

[*](Euripides, Frag. 935.)

But for thee to complain that thou dost not dwell at Sardis is no objection; for all the Athenians do not inhabit Collytus, nor do all the men of Corinth live in the Cranium, nor all of Lacedaemon in Pitane.

Do you look upon those Athenians as strangers and banished persons who removed from Melite to Diomea,—whence they called the month Metageitnion, and the sacrifices they offered in memory of their removal Metageitnia, being pleased with and cheerfully accepting this new neighborhood to another people? Surely you will not say so. What parts of the inhabited earth or of the whole earth can be said to be far distant one from another, when mathematicians demonstrate that the whole earth is to be accounted as an indivisible point, compared with the heavens? But we, like pismires or bees, when we are cast out of one ant-hill or hive, are in great anxiety, and take on as if we were strangers and undone, not knowing how to make and account all things our own, as indeed they are. We shall certainly laugh at his folly who shall affirm there was a better moon at Athens than at Corinth; and yet we in a sort commit the same error, when being in a strange country we look upon the earth, the sea, the air, the heavens doubtfully, as if they were not the same, but quite different from those we have been accustomed to. Nature in our first production sent us out free and loose; we bind and straiten and pin up ourselves in houses, and reduce ourselves into a scant and little room.

Moreover, we laugh at the kings of Persia, who (if the story be true) will drink only the water of the River Choaspes, by this means making the rest of the habitable world to be without water, as to themselves; but we, when we remove to other countries, and retain our longings after Cephissus and Eurotas, and are pleased with nothing so much as the hills Taygetus and Parnassus, we make the whole earth unhabitable to ourselves, and are without a house or city where we can dwell.

When certain Egyptians, not enduring the anger and hard usage of their king, went to dwell in Ethiopia, and some earnestly entreated them to return to their wives

Close prisoners there to be,

At th’ utmost shore of the fierce Euxine Sea.

[*](Eurip. Iph. Taur. 253.)

For if you consider the truth of things, setting aside vain fancy and opinion, he that has got an agreeable city to dwell in is a stranger and foreigner to all the rest, for it seems not reasonable and just, that leaving his own he should go to dwell in another city. As the proverb is, Sparta is the province fallen to your lot, adorn it, though it should be in no credit or prove unhealthful, though disturbed with seditions, and its affairs in distemper and out of order. But as for him whom Fortune has deprived of his own habitation, it gives him leave to go and dwell where he pleases. That goad precept of the Pythagoreans, Make choice of the best life you can, and custom will make it pleasant, is here also wise and useful. Choose the best and pleasantest place to live in, and time will make it thy country, and such a country as will not encumber and distract thee, not laying on thee such commands as these,—Bring in so much money; Go on such an embassy to Rome; Entertain such a governor; Bear such a public office. If a prudent person and no way conceited, calls these things to mind, he will choose to live in exile in such a sorry island as Gyarus, or in Cynarus that is so hard and barren and unfit for plantation, and do this without reluctancy, not making such sorrowful complaints as the women do in the poet Simonides:

The troubled sea’s dark waves surround me,

And with their horrid noise confound me;

I presume you have seen the island of Naxos, or at least the town of Hyria here hard by; in the former of which Ephialtes and Otus made their abode, and in the

Where slender cypress grows I’d have a seat,

But care not for the shady woods of Crete!

I’ve little land and so not many trees,

But free from sorrow I enjoy much ease,—

For if that be a good saying of Callimachus, that we ought not to measure wisdom by a Persian cord, much less should we measure happiness by cords of furlongs, or, if we chance to inhabit an island of two hundred furlongs and not (like Sicily) of four days’ sail in compass, think that we ought to disquiet ourselves and lament as if we were very miserable and unfortunate. For what does a place of large extent contribute to the tranquillity of one’s life? Do you not hear Tantalus saying in the tragedy:

I sow the Berecyntian ground,

A field of twelve days’ journey round?

My mind, that used to mount the skies,

Fallen to the earth dejected lies,

And now this friendly counsel brings,—

Less to admire all earthly things.

[*](From the Niobe of Aeschylus, Frag. 153 and 154.)

Remote from all commerce t’ abide,

By sea’s surrounding waves denied;

[*](Odyss. VI. 204.)

The Cyclades islands were formerly inhabited by the children of Minos, and afterwards by the children of Codrus and Neleus; in which now fools that are banished thither think they are punished. And indeed, what island is there to which men are wont to be banished that is not larger than the land that lies about Scillus, in which Xenophon after his military expedition passed delicately his old age? The Academy near Athens, that was purchased for three thousand drachmas, was the place where Plato, Xenocrates, and Polemo dwelt; there they held their schools, and there they lived all their lifetime, except one day every year, when Xenocrates came into the city at the time of the Bacchanals and the new tragedies, to grace the feast, as they say. Theocritus of Chios reproached Aristotle, who affected a court-life with Philip and Alexander, that he chose instead of the Academy rather to dwell at the mouth of Borborus. For there is a river by Pella, which the Macedonians call by that name.

But as for islands, Homer sets himself as it were studiously to commend them in these verses:

He comes to the isle of Lemnos, and the town

Where divine Thoas dwelt, of great renown;

As much as fruitful Lesbos does contain,

A seat which Gods above do not disdain;

When he to th’ lofty hills of Scyros came,

And took the town that boasts Enyeus’s name;

These from Dulichium and th’ Echinades,

Blest isles, that lie ’gainst Elis, o’er the seas.

[*](Il. XIV. 230; XXIV. 544; IX. 668; II. 625.)

When Zeno was told that the only ship he had remaining was cast away at sea with all her lading, he replied: Well done Fortune, that hast reduced me to the habit and life of a philosopher. And, indeed, a man that is not puffed up with conceit nor madly in love with a crowd will not, I suppose, have any reason to accuse Fortune for constraining him to live in an island, but will rather commend her for removing so much anxiety and agitation of his mind, for putting a stop to his rambles in foreign countries, to his dangers at sea, and the noise and tumult of the exchange, and for giving him a fixed, vacant, undisturbed life, such a life as he may truly call his own, describing as it were a circle about him, in which is contained the use of all things necessary. For what island is there that has not a horse, a walk, and a bath in it; that has not fishes and hares for such as delight in hunting and angling and such like sports? But the chiefest of all is, that the quiet which others thirst so much after thou commonly mayst have here without seeking. For those that are gamesters at dice, shutting up themselves at home, there are sycophants and busy spies that hunt them out, and prosecute them from their houses of pleasure and

These things, my friend, and such like we say and sing to those who, by being banished into an island, have no correspondence or commerce with other people,

Hindered by waves of the surrounding deep,

Which many ’gainst their mind close prisoners keep.

[*](Il. XXI. 59.)

But just as Archilochus disparaged the island of Thasos because of its asperity and inequality in some places,

Like ridge of ass’s back it stood,

Full of wild plants, for nothing good;

Men admired the happiness of the Persian kings, that passed their winter in Babylon, their summer in Media, and the pleasant spring-time at Susa. And he that is an exile may, if he pleases, when the mysteries of Ceres are celebrated, go and live at Eleusis; and he may keep the feasts of Bacchus at Argos; at the time of the Pythian games, he may pass over to Delphi, and of the Isthmian, to Corinth, if public spectacles and shows are the things he admires; if not, then he may be idle, or walk, or read, or sleep quietly; and you may add that privilege Diogenes bragged of when he said, Aristotle dines when it seems good to King Philip, but Diogenes when he himself pleases, having no business, no magistrate, no prefect to interrupt and disturb his customary way of living.

For this reason, you will find that very few of the most prudent and wise men were buried in their own country, but the most of them, when none forced them to it, weighed anchor and steered their course to live in another port, removing some to Athens, and others from it.

Who ever gave a greater encomium of his own country than Euripides in the following verses?

We are all of this country’s native race,

Not brought-in strangers from another place,

As some, like dice hither and thither thrown,

Remove in haste from this to t’other town.

And, if a woman may have leave to boast,

A temperate air breathes here in every coast;

We neither curse summer’s immoderate heat,

Nor yet complain the winter’s cold’s too great.

If aught there be that noble Greece doth yield,

Or Asia rich, by river or by field,

We seek it out and bring it to our doors.

Here lieth buried Aeschylus, the son

Of the Athenian Euphorion;

In Sicily his latest breath did yield,

And buried lies by Gela’s fruitful field.

If any one object, that these men hunted ambitiously after glory and honor, let him go to the philosophers and the schools and nurseries of wisdom at Athens, those in the Lyceum, the Academy, the Stoa, the Palladium, the Odeum. If he admires and prefers the Peripatetic philosophy before the rest, Aristotle was a native of Stagira, Theophrastus of Ephesus, Straton of Lampsacus, Glycon of Troas, Ariston of Ceus, Critolaus of Phaselis. If thou art for the Stoic philosophy, Zeno was of Citium, Cleanthes of Assus, Chrysippus of Soli, Diogenes of Babylon, Antipater of Tarsus, and Archedemus who was of Athens went over to the Parthians, and left a succession of Stoic philosophers in Babylon. And who, I pray, persecuted and chased these men out of their country?

It seems to me that the Muses helped the ancient writers to finish their choicest and most approved compositions, by calling in, as it were, banishment to their assistance. Thucydides the Athenian wrote the Peloponnesian and Athenian War in Thrace, hard by the forest of Scapte; Xenophon wrote his history in Scillus belonging to Elis; Philistus in Epirus, Timaeus of Tauromenum at Athens, Androtion the Athenian in Megara, Bacchylides the poet in Peloponnesus. These and many more, after they had lost their country, did not lose all hope nor were dejected in their minds, but took occasion thereupon to express the vivacity of their spirit and the dexterity of their wit, receiving their banishment at the hands of Fortune as a viaticum that she had sent them; whereby they became renowned everywhere after death, whereas there is no remaining mention of those factious persons that expelled them.

He therefore is ridiculous that looks upon it as an ignominious thing to be banished. For what is it that thou sayest? Was Diogenes ignominious, when Alexander, who saw him sitting and sunning himself, came and asked him whether he wanted any thing, and he answered him, that he lacked nothing but that he would go a little aside and not stand in his light? The king, admiring the presence of his mind, turned to his followers and said: If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes. Was Camillus

But because the words of Euripides move many, who seems to frame a heavy charge against banishment and to urge it home, let us see what he says more particularly in his questions and answers about it.

JOCASTA. But is’t so sad one’s country to forego,

And live in exile? Pray, son, let me know.

POL. Some ills when told are great, when tried are less;

But this is saddest felt, though sad t’ express.

JOC. What is’t, I pray, afflicts the banished most?

POL. That liberty to speak one’s mind is lost.

JOC. He is indeed a slave that dares not utter

His thoughts, nor ’gainst his cruel masters mutter.

POL. But all their insolencies must o’erpass,

And bear their follies tamely like an ass.

[*](Eurip. Phoeniss. 388.)

Both when it’s best no tongue to find,

And when it’s safe to speak his mind.

And what say you to Hannibal the Carthaginian? Did not he use a convenient freedom towards Antiochus (he at that time an exile, and the other a king), when upon an advantageous occasion he advised him to give his enemies battle? He, when he had sacrificed, told him the entrails forbade it. Hannibal sharply rebuked him thus: You are for doing what the flesh of a beast, not what the reason of a wise man, adviseth.

Neither does banishment deprive geometricians or mathematicians of the liberty of discoursing freely concerning matters they know and have skill in; and why should any worthy or good man be denied it? But meanness of thought obstructs and hinders the voice, strangles the power of speech, and makes a man a mute. But let us see what follows from Euripides:

JOC. Upon good hopes exiles can thrive, they say.

POL. Hopes have fine looks, but kill one with delay.

[*](Eurip. Phoeniss. 396.)

JOC. Did not your father’s friends aid your distress?

POL. Take care to thrive; for if you once are poor,

Those you call friends will know you then no more.

JOC. Did not your high birth stand you in some stead?

POL. It’s sad to want, for honor buys no bread.

Many a famous Grecian peer

And captain from Mycenae here

’In readiness t’ assist me tarry;

Sad service ’tis, but necessary.

[*](Ibid., 430 and 344)

No nuptial torch at all I lighted have

To thee, as doth a wedding-feast beseem;

No marriage-song was sung; nor thee to lave

Was water brought from fair Ismenus’ stream.

But is it not then an ignominious thing to be an exile? Yes, it is among fools, with whom it is a reproach to be poor, to be bald, or of low stature, and (with as much reason) to be a stranger or a pilgrim. But they that do not fall into these mistakes admire good men, though they happen to be poor or strangers or in exile. Do not we see the temple of Theseus venerated by all men, as well as the Parthenon and Eleusinium? And yet Theseus was banished from Athens, by whose means it is at this time inhabited; and lost his abode in that city, which he did not hold as a tenant, but himself built. And what remarkable thing is there remaining in Eleusis, if we are ashamed of Eumolpus, who coming thither from Thrace initiated the Greeks, and still does so, in the mysteries of religion? And whose son was Codrus, that reigned at Athens, but of that Melanthus who was banished from Messene? Will you not commend that speech of Antisthenes, who, when one said to him, Phrygia is thy mother, replied, She was also the mother of the Gods? And if any one reproach thee with thy banishment, why canst not thou answer, that the father of the great conqueror Hercules was an exile? And so was Cadmus the grandfather of Bacchus, who, being sent abroad in search for Europa, did return no more:

Sprung from Phoenicia, to Thebes he came;

Thebes to his grandson Bacchus lays a claim,

Who there inspires with rage the female rout,

That worship him by running mad about.

[*](From the Phryxus of Euripides, Frag. 816.)

And of Apollo, chaste God, banished heaven,

Empedocles, when he prefaces to his philosophy thus,—

This old decree of fate unchanged stands,—

Whoso with horrid crimes defiles his hands,

To long-lived Daemons this commission’s given

To chase him many ages out of heaven.

Into this sad condition I am hurled,

Banished from God to wander through the world,—

From what a vast and high degree

Of honor and felicity