Of Banishment, or Flying One's Country. (6-10)

When certain Egyptians, not enduring the anger and hard usage of their king, went to dwell in Ethiopia, and some earnestly entreated them to return to their wives

and children they had left behind them, they very impudently showed them their privy parts, saying they should never want wives or children whilst they carried those about them. But it is more grave and becoming to say that whosoever happens to be provided with a competency of the necessaries to life, wheresoever he is, is not without a city or a dwelling, nor need reckon himself a stranger there; only he ought to have besides these prudence and consideration, like a governing anchor, that he may be able to make advantage of any port at which he arrives. It is not easy indeed for him that has lost his wealth quickly to gather it up again; but every city becomes presently that man’s country who has the skill to use it, and who has those roots which can live and thrive, cling and grow to every place. Such had Themistocles, and such had Demetrius Phalareus; for this last named, after his banishment, being the prime friend of King Ptolemy in Alexandria, not only was abundantly provided for himself, but also sent presents to the Athenians. As for Themistocles, he was maintained by an allowance suitable to his quality at the King’s charge, and is reported to have said to his wife and children, We had been undone, if we had not been undone. Diogenes the Cynic also, when one told him, The Sinopians have condemned thee to fly from Pontus, replied, And I have condemned them to stay in Pontus,

Close prisoners there to be,

At th’ utmost shore of the fierce Euxine Sea.

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Stratonicus enquiring of his host in the isle of Seriphus what crime among them was punished with banishment, and being told forgery was so punished, he asked him why he did not commit that crime that he might be removed out of that strait place; and yet there, as the comedian expresses it, they reap down their figs with slings, and that island is provided with all things that it wants.

For if you consider the truth of things, setting aside vain fancy and opinion, he that has got an agreeable city to dwell in is a stranger and foreigner to all the rest, for it seems not reasonable and just, that leaving his own he should go to dwell in another city. As the proverb is, Sparta is the province fallen to your lot, adorn it, though it should be in no credit or prove unhealthful, though disturbed with seditions, and its affairs in distemper and out of order. But as for him whom Fortune has deprived of his own habitation, it gives him leave to go and dwell where he pleases. That goad precept of the Pythagoreans, Make choice of the best life you can, and custom will make it pleasant, is here also wise and useful. Choose the best and pleasantest place to live in, and time will make it thy country, and such a country as will not encumber and distract thee, not laying on thee such commands as these,—Bring in so much money; Go on such an embassy to Rome; Entertain such a governor; Bear such a public office. If a prudent person and no way conceited, calls these things to mind, he will choose to live in exile in such a sorry island as Gyarus, or in Cynarus that is so hard and barren and unfit for plantation, and do this without reluctancy, not making such sorrowful complaints as the women do in the poet Simonides:

The troubled sea’s dark waves surround me,

And with their horrid noise confound me;

but will rather remind himself of that saying of King Philip, who receiving a fall in a place of wrestling, when he turned himself in rising and saw the print of his body in the dust, exclaimed, Good God! what a small portion of earth has Nature assigned us, and yet we covet the whole world.

I presume you have seen the island of Naxos, or at least the town of Hyria here hard by; in the former of which Ephialtes and Otus made their abode, and in the

latter Orion dwelt. Alcmaeon’s seat was on the newly hardened mud which the river Achelous had cast up,—when he fled from the Furies, as the poets tell us,—but I guess it was when he fled from the rulers of the state and from seditions, and to avoid those furies, the sycophants and informers, that he chose that little spot of ground to dwell on, where he was free from business and lived in ease and quiet. Tiberius Caesar passed the last seven years of his life in the island of Capreae; and that sacred governing spirit that swayed the whole world, and was enclosed as it were in his breast, yet for so long time never removed nor changed place. And yet the thoughts and cares of the empire, that were poured in upon him and invaded him on every side, made that island’s repose and retirement to be less pure and undisturbed to him. But he that by retreating to a small island can free himself from great evils is a miserable man, if he does not often say and sing those verses of Pindar to himself,—

Where slender cypress grows I’d have a seat,

But care not for the shady woods of Crete!

I’ve little land and so not many trees,

But free from sorrow I enjoy much ease,—

not being disquieted with seditions or the edicts of princes, nor with administering affairs when the public is in straits, nor undergoing officers that are hard to be put by and denied.

For if that be a good saying of Callimachus, that we ought not to measure wisdom by a Persian cord, much less should we measure happiness by cords of furlongs, or, if we chance to inhabit an island of two hundred furlongs and not (like Sicily) of four days’ sail in compass, think that we ought to disquiet ourselves and lament as if we were very miserable and unfortunate. For what does a place of large extent contribute to the tranquillity of one’s life? Do you not hear Tantalus saying in the tragedy:

I sow the Berecyntian ground,

A field of twelve days’ journey round?

But he says a little after:

My mind, that used to mount the skies,

Fallen to the earth dejected lies,

And now this friendly counsel brings,—

Less to admire all earthly things.

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Nausithous, forsaking the spacious country of Hyperia because the Cyclops bordered upon it, and removing to an island far distant from all other people, chose there,

Remote from all commerce t’ abide,

By sea’s surrounding waves denied;

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and yet he procured a very pleasant way of living to his own citizens.

The Cyclades islands were formerly inhabited by the children of Minos, and afterwards by the children of Codrus and Neleus; in which now fools that are banished thither think they are punished. And indeed, what island is there to which men are wont to be banished that is not larger than the land that lies about Scillus, in which Xenophon after his military expedition passed delicately his old age? The Academy near Athens, that was purchased for three thousand drachmas, was the place where Plato, Xenocrates, and Polemo dwelt; there they held their schools, and there they lived all their lifetime, except one day every year, when Xenocrates came into the city at the time of the Bacchanals and the new tragedies, to grace the feast, as they say. Theocritus of Chios reproached Aristotle, who affected a court-life with Philip and Alexander, that he chose instead of the Academy rather to dwell at the mouth of Borborus. For there is a river by Pella, which the Macedonians call by that name.

But as for islands, Homer sets himself as it were studiously to commend them in these verses:

He comes to the isle of Lemnos, and the town

Where divine Thoas dwelt, of great renown;

and

As much as fruitful Lesbos does contain,

A seat which Gods above do not disdain;

and

When he to th’ lofty hills of Scyros came,

And took the town that boasts Enyeus’s name;

and

These from Dulichium and th’ Echinades,

Blest isles, that lie ’gainst Elis, o’er the seas.

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And among the famous men that dwelt in islands they reckon Aeolus, a great favorite of the Gods, the most prudent Ulysses, the most valiant Ajax, and Alcinous, the most courteous entertainer of strangers.