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Sec. 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,