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“Many of the princes of the Danai
And from Mycenae are with me, bestowing
A sad but necessary kindness on me.”[941]

Nor was there any more justice in the lament of his mother:–

“I never lit for you the nuptial torch
In marriage customary, nor did Ismenus
Furnish you with the usual solemn bath.”[942]

She ought to have been pleased and content to hear that her son dwelt in such a palace as that at Argos, and in lamenting that the nuptial torch was not lit, and that he had not had the usual bath in the river Ismenus, as though there was no water or fire at Argos for wedded people, she lays on exile the evils really caused by pride and stupidity.

Sec. XVII. But exile, you will say, is a matter of reproach. It may be among fools, who also jeer at the beggar, the bald man, the dwarf, aye, and even the stranger and resident alien. But those who are not carried away in that manner admire good men, whether they are poor, or strangers or exiles. Do we not see that all men adore the temple of Theseus as well as the Parthenon and Eleusinium? And yet Theseus was an exile from Athens, though it was owing to him that Athens is now inhabited, and he was banished from a city which he did not merely dwell in, but had himself built. And what glory is left to Eleusis, if we are ashamed of Eumolpus, who migrated from Thrace, and taught the Greeks (as he still teaches them) the mysteries? And who was the father of Codrus that reigned at Athens? Was it not Melanthus, an exile from Messene? And do you not praise the answer of Antisthenes to the person who told him that his mother was a Phrygian, “So also is the mother of the gods.” If you are twitted then with exile, why do you not answer, “The father of the glorious victor Hercules was an exile.” And Cadmus, the grandfather of Dionysus, when he was sent from home to find Europa, and never came back, “though a Phoenician born he changed his country,”[943] and migrated to Thebes, and became[944] the grandfather of “Dionysus, who rejoices in the cry of Evoe, the exciter of women, who delights in frantic honours.” As for what AEschylus obscurely hints at in the line,

“Apollo the chaste god, exile from heaven,”

let me keep a religious silence, as Herodotus[945] says. And Empedocles commences his system of philosophy as follows, “It is an ordinance of necessity, an ancient decree of the gods, when anyone stains his hands with crime and murder, the long-lived demons get hold of him, so that he wanders away from the gods for thirty thousand years. Such is my condition now, that of an exile and wanderer from the gods.” In these words he not only speaks of himself, but points out that all of us men similarly are strangers and foreigners and exiles in this world. For he says, “O men, it is not blood or a compounded spirit that made the being or beginning of the soul, but it is your earth-born and mortal body that is made up of these.” He calls speciously by the mildest of names the birth of the soul that has come from elsewhere a living in a strange country. But the truth is the soul is an exile and wanderer, being driven about by the divine decrees and laws, and then, as in some sea-girt island, gets joined to the body like an oyster to its shell, as Plato says, because it cannot call to mind or remember from what honour and greatness of happiness it migrated, not from Sardis to Athens, nor from Corinth to Lemnos or Scyros, but exchanging heaven and the moon for earth and life upon earth, if it shifts from place to place for ever so short a time it is put out and feels strange, and fades away like a dying plant. But although one soil is more suitable to a plant than another, and it thrives and grows better on such a soil, yet no situation can rob a man of his happiness or virtue or sense. It was in prison that Anaxagoras wrote his squaring of the circle, and that Socrates, even after drinking the hemlock, talked philosophically, and begged his friends to be philosophers, and was esteemed happy by them. On the other hand, Phaethon and Tantalus, though they got up to heaven, fell into the greatest misfortunes through their folly, as the poets tell us.

FOOTNOTES:

[913] Euripides, “Phoenissae,” 388, 389.

[914] Reading [Greek: bakelas]. Gallus in Latin.

[915] “Iliad,” xxiv. 527-533.

[916] Plato, “Timaeus,” p. 90 A. Compare Ovid, “Metamorphoses,” i. 84-86.

[917] Derived from [Greek: meta, geiton], because then people flitted and changed their neighbours.

[918] Euripides, “Iphigenia in Tauris,” 253.

[919] See also Pausanias, viii. 24.

[920] Pindar, Fragm. 126.

[921] AEschylus, “Niobe,” Fragm. 146.

[922] “Odyssey,” vi. 8. I read [Greek: andron] as Wyttenbach.

[923] “Odyssey,” vi. 204.

[924] See Pausanias, v. 6.

[925] In our money about L121 17 s. 6 d.

[926] “Iliad,” xiv. 230.

[927] “Iliad,” xxiv. 544.

[928] “Iliad,” ix. 668.

[929] “Iliad,” ii. 625, 626.

[930] So Reiske.

[931] “Iliad,” xxi. 59.

[932] Euripides, Fragm. 950.

[933] Reiske suggests [Greek: Bakchylides ho Keios]. A very probable suggestion.

[934] Euripides, “Phoenissae,” 388-393.

[935] Omitting [Greek: prhotos], which probably got in from [Greek: proton] following, and for which Reiske conjectured [Greek: horas hos].

[936] Such as Cardinal Balue was shut up by Louis XI in for fourteen years.

[937] The answer of Theodorus is wanting.

[938] Euripides, “Phoenissae,” 396, 397.

[939] That is, they never get any further.

[940] Euripides, “Phoenissae,” 402-405.

[941] Euripides, “Phoenissae,” 430-432.

[942] Ibid. 344-346.

[943] Reading [Greek: chthonos]. “Sic mutandum censet Valckenarius.”– Wyttenbach.

[944] Through his daughter Semele.

[945] Herodotus, ii. 171.