Plutarch's Morals
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,
"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.
[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.
ON FORTUNE.
Sec. I. "Fortune, not wisdom, rules the affairs of mortals."[946] And does
not justice, and fairness, and sobriety, and decorum rule the affairs of
mortals? Was it of fortune or owing to fortune that Aristides persevered
in his poverty, when he might have been lord of much wealth? And that
Scipio after taking Carthage neither saw nor received any of the spoil?
Was it of fortune or owing to fortune that Philocrates spent on harlots
and fish the money he had received from Philip? And that Lasthenes and
Euthycrates lost Olynthus, measuring happiness by their belly and lusts?
Was it of fortune that Alexander the son of Philip not only himself
abstained from the captive women, but punished others that outraged
them? Was it under the influence of an evil genius and fortune that
Alexander,[947] the son of Priam, intrigued with the wife of his host
and ran away with her, and filled two continents with war and evils? For
if all these things are due to fortune, what hinders our saying that
cats and goats and apes are under the influence of fortune in respect of
greediness, and lust, and ribaldry?
Sec. II. And if there are such things as sobriety and justice and
fortitude, with what reason can we deny the existence of prudence, and
if prudence exists, how can we deny the existence of wisdom? For
sobriety is a kind of prudence, as people say, and justice also needs
the presence of prudence. Nay more, we call the wisdom and prudence that
makes people good in regard to pleasure self-control and sobriety, and
in dangers and hardships endurance and fortitude, and in dealings
between man and man and in public life equity and justice. And so, if we
are to ascribe to fortune the acts of wisdom, let us ascribe justice and
sobriety to fortune also, aye, and let us put down to fortune stealing,
and picking pockets, and lewdness, and let us bid farewell to argument,
and throw ourselves entirely on fortune, as if we were, like dust or
refuse, borne along and hurried away by a violent wind. For if there be
no wisdom, it is not likely that there is any deliberation or
investigation of matters, or search for expediency, but Sophocles only
talked nonsense when he said,
"Whate'er is sought is found, what is neglected
Escapes our notice;"[948]
and again in dividing human affairs,
"What can be taught I learn, what can be found out
Duly investigate, and of the gods
I ask for what is to be got by prayer."[949]
For what can be found out or learnt by men, if everything is due to
fortune? And what deliberative assembly of a state is not annulled, what
council of a king is not abrogated, if all things are subject to
fortune? whom we abuse as blind because we ourselves are blind in our
dealings with her. Indeed, how can it be otherwise, seeing that we
repudiate wisdom, which is like plucking out our eyes, and take a blind
guide of our lives?
Sec. III. Supposing any of us were to assert that seeing is a matter of
fortune, not of eyesight, nor of the eyes that give light, as Plato
says, and that hearing is a matter of fortune, and not the imbibing of a
current of air through the ear and brain, it would be well for us then
to be on our guard against the evidence of our senses. But indeed nature
has given us sight and hearing and taste and smell, and all other parts
of the body and their functions, as ministers of wisdom and prudence.
For "it is the mind that sees, and the mind that hears, everything else
is deaf and blind." And just as, if there were no sun, we should have
perpetual night for all the stars, as Heraclitus says, so man for all
his senses, if he had no mind or reason, would be little better than the
beasts. But as it is, it is not by fortune or chance that we are
superior to them and masters of them, but Prometheus, that is reason, is
the cause of this,
"Presenting us with bulls, horses, and asses,
To ease us of our toil, and serve instead,"
as AEschylus says.[950] For as to fortune and natural condition, most of
the beasts are better off than we are. For some are armed with horns and
tusks and stings, and as for the hedgehog, as Empedocles says, it has
its back all rough with sharp bristles, and some are shod and protected