"By the sea waves, which many keep apart."[931]
But you who are not tied down to one spot, but only forbidden to live in one, have by that prohibition liberty to go to all others. Moreover to the considerations, I am not in office, or a member of the senate, or an umpire in the games, you may oppose these, I do not belong to any faction, I have no large sums to spend, I have not to dance attendance at the doors of the prefect, it is no odds to me who has got by lot the province, whether he is hot-tempered or an objectionable person. But just as Archilochus overlooked the fruitful fields and vineyards of Thasos, and abused that island as rocky and uneven, and said of it,
"It stands like donkey's chine crowned with wild forest,"
so we, fixing our eyes only on one aspect of exile, its inglorious state, overlook its freedom from cares, its leisure, its liberty. And yet people thought the kings of Persia happy, because they passed their winter in Babylon, their summer in Media, and the pleasant season of spring at Susa. So can the exile be present at the Eleusinian mysteries, at the festival of Dionysus at Athens, at the Nemean games at Argos, at the Pythian games at Delphi, and can pass on and be a spectator of the Isthmian and Corinthian games, if he is fond of sight-seeing; and if not, he has leisure, can walk about, read, sleep without being disturbed, and can say like Diogenes, "Aristotle has to dine when Philip thinks fit, Diogenes can dine at any time he himself chooses," having no business, or magistrate, or prefect, to put him out of his general habits of living.
§ 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.