Plutarch's Morals Part 41

"For their strength has no longer flesh and bones,"[911]

nor have the dead any vestige of body that can receive the infliction of punishment that can make impression; but in reality the only punishment of those who have lived ill is infamy and obscurity and utter annihilation, which hurries them off to the dark river of oblivion,[912]

and plunges them into the abyss of a fathomless sea, involving them in uselessness and idleness, ignorance and obscurity.

[895] Probably Epicurus, as we infer from the very personal -- iii.

[896] Euripides, Fragm. 930.

[897] Reading with Wyttenbach, [Greek: Alla touto men taute].

[898] Reading [Greek: ekastou] for [Greek: ekaston].

Reiske proposed [Greek: ekaston].

[899] Reading [Greek: ei] (for [Greek: hina]) with Xylander and Wyttenbach.

[900] Reading with Wyttenbach.

[901] Adopting the suggestion of Wyttenbach, "Forte [Greek: kalou], at Amiot."

[902] Frag. 742.

[903] "Dormiens quisque in peculiarem abest mumdum, expergefactus in communem redit."--_Xylander._ Compare Herrick's Poem, "_Dreames._"

[904] Bright.

[905] Invisible.

[906] [Greek: phos].

[907] Reading with Wyttenbach [Greek: echthairei].

[908] Reading [Greek: phesin] for [Greek: physin].

[909] Hiatus hic valde deflendus.

[910] As was fabled about t.i.tyus, "Odyssey," xi.

576-579.

[911] "Odyssey," xi. 219.

[912] So Reiske, [Greek: potamin tes lethes].

ON EXILE.

-- I. They say those discourses, like friends, are best and surest that come to our refuge and aid in adversity, and are useful. For many who come forward do more harm than good in the remarks they make to the unfortunate, as people unable to swim trying to rescue the drowning get entangled with them and sink to the bottom together. Now the discourse that ought to come from friends and people disposed to be helpful should be consolation, and not mere a.s.sent with a man's sad feelings. For we do not in adverse circ.u.mstances need people to weep and wail with us like choruses in a tragedy, but people to speak plainly to us and instruct us, that grief and dejection of mind are in all cases useless and idle and senseless; and that where the circ.u.mstances themselves, when examined by the light of reason, enable a man to say to himself that his trouble is greater in fancy than in reality, it is quite ridiculous not to inquire of the body what it has suffered, nor of the mind if it is any the worse for what has happened, but to employ external sympathizers to teach us what our grief is.

-- II. Therefore let us examine alone by ourselves the weight of our misfortunes, as if they were burdens. For the body is weighed down by the burden of what presses on it, but the soul often adds to the real load a burden of its own. A stone is naturally hard, and ice naturally cold, but they do not receive these properties and impressions from without; whereas with regard to exile and loss of reputation or honours, as also with regard to their opposites, as crowns and office and position, it is not their own intrinsic nature but our opinion of them that is the gauge of their real joy or sorrow, so that each person makes them for himself light or heavy, easy to bear or hard to bear. When Polynices was asked

"What is't to be an exile? Is it grievous?"

he replied to the question,

"Most grievous, and in deed worse than in word."[913]

Compare with this the language of Alcman, as the poet has represented him in the following lines. "Sardis, my father's ancient home, had I had the fortune to be reared in thee, I should have been dressed in gold as a priest of Cybele,[914] and beaten the fine drums; but as it is my name is Alcman, and I am a citizen of Sparta, and I have learned to write Greek poetry, which makes me greater than the tyrants Dascyles or Gyges." Thus the very same thing one man's opinion makes good, like current coin, and another's bad and injurious.

-- III. But let it be granted that exile is, as many say and sing, a grievous thing. So some food is bitter, and sharp, and biting to the taste, yet by an admixture with it of sweet and agreeable food we take away its unpleasantness. There are also some colours unpleasant to look at, that quite confuse and dazzle us by their intensity and excessive force. If then we can relieve this by a mixture of shadow, or by diverting the eye to green or some agreeable colour, so too can we deal with misfortunes, mixing up with them the advantages and pleasant things we still enjoy, as wealth, or friends, or leisure, and no deficiency in what is necessary for our subsistence. For I do not think that there are many natives of Sardis who would not choose your fortune even with exile, and be content to live as you do in a strange land, rather than, like snails who have no other home than their sh.e.l.ls, enjoy no other blessing but staying at home in ease.

-- IV. As then he in the comedy that was exhorting an unfortunate friend to take courage and bear up against fortune, when he asked him "how,"

answered "as a philosopher," so may we also play the philosopher's part and bear up against fortune manfully. How do we do when it rains, or when the North Wind doth blow? We go to the fire, or the baths, or the house, or put on another coat: we don't sit down in the rain and cry. So too can you more than most revive and cheer yourself for the chill of adversity, not standing in need of outward aid, but sensibly using your actual advantages. The surgeon's cupping-gla.s.ses extract the worst humours from the body to relieve and preserve the rest of it, whereas the melancholy and querulous by ever dwelling on their worst circ.u.mstances, and thinking only of them, and being engrossed by their troubles, make even useful things useless to them, at the very time when the need is most urgent. For as to those two jars, my friend, that Homer[915] says are stored in Heaven, one full of good fortunes, one of bad, it is not Zeus that presides as the dispenser of them, giving to some a gentle and even portion, and to others unmixed streams of evils, but ourselves. For the sensible make their life pleasanter and more endurable by mitigating their sorrows with the consideration of their blessings, while most people, like sieves, let the worst things stick to them while the best pa.s.s through.

-- 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 Taenarum, 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, G.o.d, 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 Lacedaemonians 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 a.s.serts 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 Parna.s.sus, 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 pa.s.sed 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] 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 emba.s.sy 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,

"I am shut in by the dark roaring sea That foams all round,"

but he will rather be of the mind of Philip, who when he was thrown in wrestling, and turned round, and noticed the mark his body made in the dust, said, "O Hercules, what a little part of the earth I have by nature, though I desire all the world!"

-- IX. I think also you have seen Naxos, or at any rate Hyria, which is close here. But the former was the home of Ephialtes and Otus, and the latter was the dwelling-place of Orion. And Alcmaeon, when fleeing from the Furies, so the poets tell us, dwelt in a place recently formed by the silting of the Achelous;[919] but I think he chose that little spot to dwell in ease and quiet, merely to avoid political disturbances and factions, and those furies informers. And the Emperor Tiberius lived the last seven years of his life in the island of Capreae, and the sacred governing power of the world enclosed in his breast during all that time never changed its abode. But the incessant and constant cares of empire, coming from all sides, made not that island repose of his pure and complete. But he who can disembark on a small island, and get rid of great troubles, is a miserable man, if he cannot often say and sing to himself those lines of Pindar, "To love the slender cypress, and to leave the Cretan pastures lying near Ida. I have but little land, where I grow strong, and have nothing to do with sorrow or faction,"[920] or the ordinances of princes, or public duties in political emergencies, or state functions hard to get off.

-- X. For if that seems a good saying of Callimachus, "Do not measure wisdom by a Persian rope," much less should we measure happiness by ropes and parasangs, and if we inhabit an island containing 200 furlongs only, and not (like Sicily) four days' sail round, ought we to wail and lament as if we were very unfortunate? For how does plenty of room bring about an easy life? Have you not heard Tantalus saying in the play,[921]

"I sow a field that takes twelve days to travel round, The Berecyntian region,"

but shortly after he says,

"My fortunes, that were once as high as heaven, Now to the ground are fallen, and do say to me, 'Learn not to make too much of earthly things.'"