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.
1
As for those things which Aeschylus obscurely insinuates
in that expression of his,
[p. 34]
And of Apollo, chaste God, banished heaven,
I'll favor my tongue, as Herodotus phrases it, and say
nothing.
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,—
does not here only point at himself; but in what he
says of himself he shows the condition of us all, that we
are pilgrims and strangers and exiles here in this world.
For know, says he, O men, that it is not blood nor a spirit
tempered with it that gave being and beginning to the soul,
but it is your terrestrial and mortal body that is made up
of these. And by the soft name of pilgrimage, he insinuates the origin of the soul, that comes hither from another
place. And the truth is, she flies and wanders up and down,
being driven by the divine decrees and laws; and afterwards, as in an island surrounded with a great sea, as
Plato speaks, she is tied and linked to the body, just like
an oyster to its shell, and because she is not able to remember nor relate,
From what a vast and high degree
Of honor and felicity
she has removed,—not from Sardis to Athens, not from
Corinth to Lemnos or Scyros, but having changed heaven
and the moon for earth and an earthly life,—if she is
forced to make little removes here from place to place, the
soul hereupon is ill at ease and troubled at her new and
strange state, and hangs her head like a decaying plant.
And indeed some one country is found to be more agreeable to a plant than another, in which it thrives and flourishes better; but no place can deprive a man of his happiness, unless he pleases, no more than of his virtue and
[p. 35]
prudence. For Anaxagoras wrote his book of the Squaring of a Circle in prison; and Socrates, just when he was
going to drink the poison that killed him, discoursed of
philosophy, and exhorted his friends to the study of it;
who then admired him as a happy man. But Phaëton
and Tantalus, though they mounted up to heaven, yet,
the poets tell us, through their folly fell into the extremest
calamities.
