§ v. And so, if we fall into any real trouble or evil, we ought to get cheerfulness and ease of mind from the consideration of the actual blessings that are still left to us, mitigating outward trouble by private happiness. And as to those things which are not really evil in their nature, but only so from imagination and empty fancy, we must act as we do with children who are afraid of masks: by bringing them near, and putting them in their hands, and turning them about, we accustom them never to heed them at all: and so we by bringing reason to bear on it may discover the rottenness and emptiness and exaggeration of our fancy. As a case in point let us take your present exile from what you deem your country. For in nature no country, or house, or field, or smithy, as Aristo said, or surgery, is peculiarly ours, but all such things exist or rather take their name in connection with the person who dwells in them or possesses them. For man, as Plato says, is not an earthly and immovable but heavenly plant, the head making the body erect as from a root, and turned up to heaven.[916] And so Hercules said well,
"Argive or Theban am I, I vaunt not To be of one town only, every tower That does to Greece belong, that is my country."
But better still said Socrates, that he was not an Athenian or Greek, but a citizen of the world (as a man might say he was a Rhodian or Corinthian), for he did not confine himself to Sunium, or Tænarum, or the Ceraunian mountains.
"See you the boundless reach of sky above, And how it holds the earth in its soft arms?"
These are the boundaries of our country, nor is there either exile or stranger or foreigner in these, where there is the same fire, water and air, the same rulers controllers and presidents, the sun the moon and the morning star, the same laws to all, under one appointment and ordinance the summer and winter solstices, the equinoxes, Pleias and Arcturus, the seasons of sowing and planting; where there is one king and ruler, God, who has under his jurisdiction the beginning and middle and end of everything, and travels round and does everything in a regular way in accordance with nature; and in his wake to punish all transgressions of the divine law follows Justice, whom all men naturally invoke in dealing with one another as fellow citizens.
§ vi. As to your not dwelling at Sardis, that is nothing. Neither do all the Athenians dwell at Colyttus, nor all the Corinthians at Craneum, nor all the Lacedæmonians at Pitane. Do you consider all those Athenians strangers and exiles who removed from Melita to Diomea, where they call the month Metageitnion,[917] and keep the festival Metageitnia to commemorate their migration, and gladly and gaily accept and are content with their neighbourhood with other people? Surely you would not. What part of the inhabited world or of the whole earth is very far distant from another part, seeing that mathematicians teach us that the whole earth is a mere point compared to heaven? But we, like ants or bees, if we get banished from one ant-hill or hive are in sore distress and feel lost, not knowing or having learnt to make and consider all things our own, as indeed they are. And yet we laugh at the stupidity of one who asserts that the moon shines brighter at Athens than at Corinth, though in a sort we are in the same case ourselves, when in a strange land we look on the earth, the sea, the air, the sky, as if we doubted whether or not they were different from those we had been accustomed to. For nature makes us free and unrestrained, but we bind and confine immure and force ourselves into small and scanty space. Then too we laugh at the Persian kings, who, if the story be true, drink only of the water of the Choaspes, thus making the rest of the world waterless as far as they are concerned, but when we migrate to other places, we desire the water of the Cephisus, or we yearn for the Eurotas, or Taygetus, or Parnassus, and so make the whole world for ourselves houseless and homeless.
§ vii. Some Egyptians, who migrated to Ethiopia because of the anger and wrath of their king, to those who begged them to return to their wives and children very immodestly exposed their persons, saying that they would never be in want of wives or children while so provided. It is far more becoming and less low to say that whoever has the good fortune to be provided with the few necessaries of life is nowhere a stranger, nowhere without home and hearth, only he must have besides these prudence and sense, as an anchor and helm, that he may be able to moor himself in any harbour. For a person indeed who has lost his wealth it is not easy quickly to get another fortune, but every city is at once his country to the man who knows how to make it such, and has the roots by which he can live and thrive and get acclimatized in every place, as was the case with Themistocles and Demetrius of Phalerum. The latter after his banishment became a great friend of Ptolemy at Alexandria, and not only passed his days in abundance, but also sent gifts to the Athenians. And Themistocles, who was publicly entertained at the king's expense, is stated to have said to his wife and children, "We should have been ruined, if we had not been ruined." And so Diogenes the Cynic to the person who said to him, "The people of Sinope have condemned you to banishment from Pontus," replied, "And I have condemned them to stay in Pontus, 'by the high cliffs of the inhospitable sea.'"[918][918] And Stratonicus asked his host at Seriphus, for what offence exile was the appointed punishment, and being told that they punished rogues by exile, said, "Why then are not you a rogue, to escape from this hole of a place?" For the comic poet says they get their crop of figs down there with slings, and that the island is very barely supplied with the necessaries of life.
§ viii. For if you look at the real facts and shun idle fancy, he that has one city is a stranger and foreigner in all others. For it does not seem to such a one fair and just to leave his own city and dwell in another. "It has been your lot to be a citizen of Sparta, see that you adorn your native city," whether it be inglorious, or unhealthy, or disturbed with factions, or has its affairs in disorder. But the person whom fortune has deprived of his own city, she allows to make his home in any he fancies. That was an excellent precept of Pythagoras, "Choose the best kind of life, custom will make it easy." So too it is wise and profitable to say here, "Choose the best and pleasantest city, time will make it your country, and a country that will not always distract you and trouble you and give you various orders such as, 'Contribute so much money, Go on an embassy to Rome, Entertain the prefect, Perform public duties.'" If a person in his senses and not altogether silly were to think of these things, he would prefer to live in exile in some island, like Gryarus or Cinarus,
"Savage, and fruitless, ill repaying tillage,"
and that not in dejection and wailing, or using the language of those women in Simonides,