Chapter 39

§ XIII. And so it is that you will find few of the wisest and most intelligent men buried in their own countries, but most (even without any compulsion) have themselves weighed anchor, and transferred their course, and removed, some to Athens, some from it. For who ever bestowed such encomium upon his country as Euripides did in the following lines?

"First we are not a race brought in from other parts, But are indigenous, when all other cities Are, draughts-men like, transferred from place to place, And are imported from elsewhere. And, lady, If it is not beside the mark to boast, We have above us a well-tempered sky, A climate not too hot, nor yet too cold. And all the finest things in Greece or Asia We do procure as an attraction here."[932]

And yet the author of these lines went to Macedonia, and lived all the latter part of his life at the court of Archelaus. And of course you have heard the following epitaph;

"Here lies Euphorion's son, Athenian Æschylus, To whom death came in corn-producing Gela."

For he, like Simonides before him, went to Sicily. And many have changed the commencing words of Herodotus, "This is the setting forth of the history of Herodotus of Halicarnassus" into "Herodotus of Thurii." For he migrated to Thurii, and participated in that colony. As to the divine and sacred spirit of the Muses, the poet of the Trojan war, Homer, did not many cities claim him as theirs, because he did not cry up one city only? And Hospitable Zeus has many great honours.

§ XIV. And if anyone shall say that these pursued glory and honour, go to the philosophers, and their schools and lectures, consider those at the Lyceum, the Academy, the Porch, the Palladium, the Odeum. If you admire and prefer the Peripatetic school, Aristotle was a native of Stagira, Theophrastus of Eresus, Strato of Lampsacus, Glyco of Troas, Aristo of Ceos, Critolaus of Phaselis. If you prefer the Stoic school, Zeno was a native of Cittium, Cleanthes of Assus, Chrysippus of Soli, Diogenes of Babylon, Antipater of Tarsus; and the Athenian Archidemus migrated to the country of the Parthians, and left at Babylon a succession of the Stoic school. Who exiled these men? Nobody; it was their own pursuit of quiet, of which no one who is famous or powerful can get much at home, that made them teach us this by their practice, while they taught us other things by their precepts. And even nowadays most excellent and renowned persons live in strange lands, not in consequence of being expelled or banished, but at their own option, to avoid business and distracting cares, and the want of leisure which their own country would bring them. For it seems to me that the Muses aided our old writers to complete their finest and most esteemed works by calling in exile as a fellow-worker. Thus Thucydides the Athenian wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians in Thrace near the forest of Scapte, Xenophon wrote at Scillus in Elis, Philistus in Epirus, Timæus of Tauromenium at Athens, Androtion of Athens at Megara, and Bacchylides the poet[933] in Peloponnesus. All these and many more, though exiled from their country, did not despair or give themselves up to dejection, but so happy was their disposition that they considered exile a resource given them by fortune, whereby they obtained universal fame after their deaths, whereas no memorial is left of those who were factious against them and banished them.

§ XV. He therefore is ridiculous who thinks that any ignominy attaches itself to exile. What say you? Was Diogenes without glory, whom Alexander saw basking in the sun, and stopped to ask if he wanted anything, and when he answered, "Nothing, but that you would get a little out of my light," Alexander, astonished at his spirit, said to his friends, "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes." Was Camillus without glory when banished from Rome, of which he is now accounted the second founder? And indeed Themistocles did not lose by his exile the glory he had obtained among the Greeks, but he added to it among the barbarians, and there is no one so without honour, so ignoble, who would prefer to be Leobates who indicted him rather than Themistocles the exile, or Clodius who banished Cicero rather than the banished one, or Aristophon the accuser rather than Timotheus who got driven by him from his country.

§ XVI. But since a good many are moved by the lines of Euripides, who seems to bring a strong indictment against exile, let us see what it is he says in each question and answer about it.

_Jocasta._ What is't to be an exile? Is it grievous?

_Polynices._ Most grievous, and in deed worse than in word.

_Jocasta._ What is its aspect? What is hard for exiles?

_Polynices._ This is the greatest, that they have no freedom.

_Jocasta._ This is a slave's life not to speak one's thoughts!

_Polynices._ Then one must put up with one's masters' follies.[934]

But this is not a right or true estimate.[935] For first of all, not to say out all one thinks is not the action of a slave but of a sensible man, in times and matters that require reticence and silence, as Euripides himself has said elsewhere better,

"Be silent where 'tis meet, speak where 'tis safe."

Then as for the follies of one's masters, one has to put up with them just as much in one's own country as in exile. Indeed, more frequently have the former reason to fear that the powerful in cities will act unjustly to them either through calumny or violence. But his greatest and absurdest error is that he takes away from exiles freedom of speech. It is wonderful, if Theodorus had no freedom of speech, that when Lysimachus the king said to him, "Did not your country cast you out because of your character?" replied, "Yes, as Semele cast out Dionysus, when unable to bear him any longer." And when he showed him Telesphorus in a cage,[936] with his eyes scooped out, and his nose and ears and tongue cut off, and said to him, "This is how I treat those that act ill to me." * *[937] And had not Diogenes freedom of speech, who, when he visited Philip's camp just as he was on the eve of offering battle to the Greeks, and was taken before the king as a spy, told him he had come to see his insatiable folly, who was going shortly to stake his dominions and life on a mere die. And did not Hannibal the Carthaginian use freedom of speech to Antiochus, though he was an exile, and Antiochus a king? For as a favourable occasion presented itself he urged the king to attack the enemy, and when after sacrifice he reported that the entrails forbade it, Hannibal chided him and said, "You listen rather to what flesh tells you than to the instruction of a man of experience." Nor does exile deprive geometricians or grammarians of their freedom of speech, or prevent their discussing what they know and have learnt. Why should it then good and worthy men? It is meanness everywhere that stops a man's speech, ties and gags his tongue, and forces him to be silent. But what are the next lines of Euripides?

_Jocasta._ Hopes feed the hearts of exiles, so they say.

_Polynices._ Hopes have a flattering smile, but still delay.[938]

But this is an accusation against folly rather than exile. For it is not those who have learnt and know how to enjoy the present, but those who ever hang on the future, and hope after what they have not, that float as it were on hope as on a raft, though they never get beyond the walls.[939]

_Jocasta._ But did your father's friends do nothing for you?

_Polynices._ Be fortunate! Friends are no use in trouble.

_Jocasta._ Did not your good birth better your condition?

_Polynices._ 'Tis bad to want. Birth brought no bread to me.[940]

But it was ungrateful in Polynices thus to rail against exile as discrediting his good birth and robbing him of friends, for it was on account of his good birth that he was deemed worthy of a royal bride though an exile, and he came to fight supported by a band of friends and allies, a great force, as he himself admits a little later,

"Many of the princes of the Danai And from Mycenæ are with me, bestowing A sad but necessary kindness on me."[941]

Nor was there any more justice in the lament of his mother:--

"I never lit for you the nuptial torch In marriage customary, nor did Ismenus Furnish you with the usual solemn bath."[942]

She ought to have been pleased and content to hear that her son dwelt in such a palace _as that at Argos_, and in lamenting that the nuptial torch was not lit, and that he had not had the usual bath in the river Ismenus, as though there was no water or fire at Argos for wedded people, she lays on exile the evils really caused by pride and stupidity.

§ XVII. But exile, you will say, is a matter of reproach. It may be among fools, who also jeer at the beggar, the bald man, the dwarf, aye, and even the stranger and resident alien. But those who are not carried away in that manner admire good men, whether they are poor, or strangers or exiles. Do we not see that all men adore the temple of Theseus as well as the Parthenon and Eleusinium? And yet Theseus was an exile from Athens, though it was owing to him that Athens is now inhabited, and he was banished from a city which he did not merely dwell in, but had himself built. And what glory is left to Eleusis, if we are ashamed of Eumolpus, who migrated from Thrace, and taught the Greeks (as he still teaches them) the mysteries? And who was the father of Codrus that reigned at Athens? Was it not Melanthus, an exile from Messene? And do you not praise the answer of Antisthenes to the person who told him that his mother was a Phrygian, "So also is the mother of the gods." If you are twitted then with exile, why do you not answer, "The father of the glorious victor Hercules was an exile." And Cadmus, the grandfather of Dionysus, when he was sent from home to find Europa, and never came back, "though a Phoenician born he changed his country,"[943] and migrated to Thebes, and became[944] the grandfather of "Dionysus, who rejoices in the cry of Evoe, the exciter of women, who delights in frantic honours." As for what Æschylus obscurely hints at in the line,

"Apollo the chaste god, exile from heaven,"

let me keep a religious silence, as Herodotus[945] says. And Empedocles commences his system of philosophy as follows, "It is an ordinance of necessity, an ancient decree of the gods, when anyone stains his hands with crime and murder, the long-lived demons get hold of him, so that he wanders away from the gods for thirty thousand years. Such is my condition now, that of an exile and wanderer from the gods." In these words he not only speaks of himself, but points out that all of us men similarly are strangers and foreigners and exiles in this world. For he says, "O men, it is not blood or a compounded spirit that made the being or beginning of the soul, but it is your earth-born and mortal body that is made up of these." He calls speciously by the mildest of names the birth of the soul that has come from elsewhere a living in a strange country. But the truth is the soul is an exile and wanderer, being driven about by the divine decrees and laws, and then, as in some sea-girt island, gets joined to the body like an oyster to its shell, as Plato says, because it cannot call to mind or remember from what honour and greatness of happiness it migrated, not from Sardis to Athens, nor from Corinth to Lemnos or Scyros, but exchanging heaven and the moon for earth and life upon earth, if it shifts from place to place for ever so short a time it is put out and feels strange, and fades away like a dying plant. But although one soil is more suitable to a plant than another, and it thrives and grows better on such a soil, yet no situation can rob a man of his happiness or virtue or sense. It was in prison that Anaxagoras wrote his squaring of the circle, and that Socrates, even after drinking the hemlock, talked philosophically, and begged his friends to be philosophers, and was esteemed happy by them. On the other hand, Phaëthon and Tantalus, though they got up to heaven, fell into the greatest misfortunes through their folly, as the poets tell us.

[913] Euripides, "Phoenissæ," 388, 389.

[914] Reading [Greek: bakelas]. _Gallus_ in Latin.

[915] "Iliad," xxiv. 527-533.

[916] Plato, "Timæus," p. 90 A. Compare Ovid, "Metamorphoses," i. 84-86.

[917] Derived from [Greek: meta, geitôn], because then people flitted and changed their neighbours.

[918] Euripides, "Iphigenia in Tauris," 253.

[919] See also Pausanias, viii. 24.

[920] Pindar, Fragm. 126.

[921] Æschylus, "Niobe," Fragm. 146.

[922] "Odyssey," vi. 8. I read [Greek: andrôn] as Wyttenbach.

[923] "Odyssey," vi. 204.

[924] See Pausanias, v. 6.

[925] In our money about £121 17_s._ 6_d._

[926] "Iliad," xiv. 230.

[927] "Iliad," xxiv. 544.

[928] "Iliad," ix. 668.

[929] "Iliad," ii. 625, 626.

[930] So Reiske.

[931] "Iliad," xxi. 59.

[932] Euripides, Fragm. 950.

[933] Reiske suggests [Greek: Bakchylidês ho Keios]. A very probable suggestion.

[934] Euripides, "Phoenissæ," 388-393.

[935] Omitting [Greek: prhôtôs], which probably got in from [Greek: prôton] following, and for which Reiske conjectured [Greek: horas hôs].

[936] Such as Cardinal Balue was shut up by Louis XI in for fourteen years.

[937] The answer of Theodorus is wanting.

[938] Euripides, "Phoenissæ," 396, 397.

[939] That is, they never get any further.

[940] Euripides, "Phoenissæ," 402-405.

[941] Euripides, "Phoenissæ," 430-432.

[942] Ibid. 344-346.

[943] Reading [Greek: chthonos]. "Sic mutandum censet Valckenarius."--_Wyttenbach._

[944] Through his daughter Semele.

[945] Herodotus, ii. 171.

ON FORTUNE.

§ I. "Fortune, not wisdom, rules the affairs of mortals."[946] And does not justice, and fairness, and sobriety, and decorum rule the affairs of mortals? Was it of fortune or owing to fortune that Aristides persevered in his poverty, when he might have been lord of much wealth? And that Scipio after taking Carthage neither saw nor received any of the spoil? Was it of fortune or owing to fortune that Philocrates spent on harlots and fish the money he had received from Philip? And that Lasthenes and Euthycrates lost Olynthus, measuring happiness by their belly and lusts? Was it of fortune that Alexander the son of Philip not only himself abstained from the captive women, but punished others that outraged them? Was it under the influence of an evil genius and fortune that Alexander,[947] the son of Priam, intrigued with the wife of his host and ran away with her, and filled two continents with war and evils? For if all these things are due to fortune, what hinders our saying that cats and goats and apes are under the influence of fortune in respect of greediness, and lust, and ribaldry?

§ II. And if there are such things as sobriety and justice and fortitude, with what reason can we deny the existence of prudence, and if prudence exists, how can we deny the existence of wisdom? For sobriety is a kind of prudence, as people say, and justice also needs the presence of prudence. Nay more, we call the wisdom and prudence that makes people good in regard to pleasure self-control and sobriety, and in dangers and hardships endurance and fortitude, and in dealings between man and man and in public life equity and justice. And so, if we are to ascribe to fortune the acts of wisdom, let us ascribe justice and sobriety to fortune also, aye, and let us put down to fortune stealing, and picking pockets, and lewdness, and let us bid farewell to argument, and throw ourselves entirely on fortune, as if we were, like dust or refuse, borne along and hurried away by a violent wind. For if there be no wisdom, it is not likely that there is any deliberation or investigation of matters, or search for expediency, but Sophocles only talked nonsense when he said,

"Whate'er is sought is found, what is neglected Escapes our notice;"[948]

and again in dividing human affairs,

"What can be taught I learn, what can be found out Duly investigate, and of the gods I ask for what is to be got by prayer."[949]

For what can be found out or learnt by men, if everything is due to fortune? And what deliberative assembly of a state is not annulled, what council of a king is not abrogated, if all things are subject to fortune? whom we abuse as blind because we ourselves are blind in our dealings with her. Indeed, how can it be otherwise, seeing that we repudiate wisdom, which is like plucking out our eyes, and take a blind guide of our lives?

§ III. Supposing any of us were to assert that seeing is a matter of fortune, not of eyesight, nor of the eyes that give light, as Plato says, and that hearing is a matter of fortune, and not the imbibing of a current of air through the ear and brain, it would be well for us then to be on our guard against the evidence of our senses. But indeed nature has given us sight and hearing and taste and smell, and all other parts of the body and their functions, as ministers of wisdom and prudence. For "it is the mind that sees, and the mind that hears, everything else is deaf and blind." And just as, if there were no sun, we should have perpetual night for all the stars, as Heraclitus says, so man for all his senses, if he had no mind or reason, would be little better than the beasts. But as it is, it is not by fortune or chance that we are superior to them and masters of them, but Prometheus, that is reason, is the cause of this,

"Presenting us with bulls, horses, and asses, To ease us of our toil, and serve instead,"

as Æschylus says.[950] For as to fortune and natural condition, most of the beasts are better off than we are. For some are armed with horns and tusks and stings, and as for the hedgehog, as Empedocles says, it has its back all rough with sharp bristles, and some are shod and protected by scales and fur and talons and hoofs worn smooth by use, whereas man alone, as Plato says, is left by nature naked, unarmed, unshod, and uncovered. But by one gift, that of reason and painstaking and forethought, nature compensates for all these deficiencies. "Small indeed is the strength of man, but by the versatility of his intellect he can tame the inhabitants of the sea, earth, and air."[951] Nothing is more agile and swift than horses, yet they run for man; the dog is a courageous and high-spirited creature, yet it guards man; fish is most pleasant to the taste, the pig the fattest of all animals, yet both are food and delicacies for man. What is huger or more formidable in appearance than the elephant? Yet it is man's plaything, and a spectacle at public shows, and learns to dance and kneel. And all these things are not idly introduced, but to the end that they may teach us to what heights reason raises man, and what things it sets him above, and how it makes him master of everything.

"For we are not good boxers, nor good wrestlers, Nor yet swift runners,"[952]

for in all these points we are less fortunate than the beasts. But by our experience and memory and wisdom and cunning, as Anaxagoras says, we make use of them, and get their honey and milk, and catch them, and drive and lead them about at our will. And there is nothing of fortune in this, it is all the result of wisdom and forethought.

§ IV. Moreover the labours of carpenters and coppersmiths and house-builders and statue-makers are affairs of mortals, and we see that no success in such trades is got by fortune or chance. For that fortune plays a very small part in the life of a wise man, whether coppersmith or house-builder, and that the greatest works are wrought by art alone, is shown by the poet in the following lines:--

"All handicraftsmen go into the street, Ye that with fan-shaped baskets worship Ergane, Zeus' fierce-eyed daughter;"[953]

for Ergane[954] and Athene, and not Fortune, do the trades regard as their patrons. They do indeed say that Nealces,[955] on one occasion painting a horse, was quite satisfied with his painting in all other respects, but that some foam on the bridle from the horse's breath did not please him, so that he frequently tried to rub it out; at last in his anger he threw his sponge (just as it was, full of colours) at the picture, and this very wonderfully produced exactly the effect he desired. This is the only fortunate accident in art that history records. Artificers everywhere use rules and weights and measures, that none of their work may be done at random and anyhow. And indeed the arts may be considered as wisdom on a small scale, or rather as emanations from and fragments of wisdom scattered about among the necessities of life; as the fire of Prometheus is riddled to have been divided and scattered about in all quarters of the world. For thus small particles and fragments of wisdom, breaking up as it were and getting divided into pieces, have formed into order.

§ V. It is strange then that the arts do not require fortune to attain to their ends, and yet that the most important and complete of all the arts, the sum total of man's glory and merit, should be so completely powerless. Why, there is a kind of wisdom even in the tightening or slackening of chords, which people call music, and in the dressing of food, which we call the art of cooking, and in cleaning clothes, which we call the art of the fuller, and we teach boys how to put on their shoes and clothes generally, and to take their meat in the right hand and their bread in the left, since none of these things come by fortune, but require attention and care. And are we to suppose that the most important things which make so much for happiness do not call for wisdom, and have nothing to do with reason and forethought? Why, no one ever yet wetted earth with water and then left it, thinking it would become bricks by fortune and spontaneously, or procured wool and leather, and sat down and prayed Fortune that it might become clothes and shoes; nor does anyone getting together much gold and silver and a quantity of slaves, and living in a spacious hall with many doors, and making a display of costly couches and tables, believe that these things will constitute his happiness, and give him a painless happy life secure from changes, unless he be wise also. A certain person asked the general Iphicrates in a scolding way who he was, as he seemed neither a heavy-armed soldier, nor a bowman, nor a targeteer, and he replied, "I am the person who rule and make use of all these."

§ VI. So wisdom is neither gold, nor silver, nor fame, nor wealth, nor health, nor strength, nor beauty. What is it then? It is what can use all these well, and that by means of which each of these things becomes pleasant and esteemed and useful, and without which they are useless; and unprofitable and injurious, and a burden and disgrace to their possessor. So Hesiod's Prometheus gives very good advice to Epimetheus, "not to receive gifts from Olympian Zeus but to send them back,"[956] meaning external things and things of fortune. For as if he urged one who knew nothing of music not to play on the pipe, or one who knew nothing of letters not to read, or one who was not used to horses not to ride, so he advised him not to take office if he were foolish, nor to grow rich if he were illiberal, nor to marry if likely to be ruled by his wife. For success beyond their merit is to foolish persons a cause of folly, as Demosthenes said,[957] and good fortune beyond their merit is to those who are not sensible a cause of misfortune.[958]

[946] A line from Chæremon.

[947] Better known as Paris.

[948] "Oedipus Tyrannus," 110, 111. Wyttenbach compares Terence, "Heauton Timorumenos," 675. "Nil tam difficilest, quin quærende investigari possiet."

[949] Soph., Frag. 723.

[950] Æschylus, Fragm. 180. Reading [Greek: antidoula] with Reiske and the MSS.