Chapter XII: Book IX: Question 1. Concerning verses fitly applied, and the (1)

reverse, 436-438. 2, 3. Why is Alpha placed first in the alphabet?
and what is the proportion between the number of vowels and
semi-vowels? 438-441. 4. Which of the hands of Venus did Diomedes
wound? 441. 5. Why Plato says that the soul of Ajax came to draw her
lot in the twentieth place in hell, 442, 443. 6. What is meant by
the fable about the defeat of Neptune? and why do the Athenians omit
the second day of the month Boëdromion? 444, 445. 12. Is it probable
that the number of the stars is even or odd? 446. 13. A moot-point
from the third book of the Iliad, 446-450. 14. Observations about the
number of the Muses, and their relation to human affairs, 450-456.
15. That there are three parts in dancing, motion, gesture, and
representation: what each part is, and what is common to both poetry
and dancing, 457-460.

OF MORAL VIRTUE.

BY C. H., ESQUIRE.

Plan of the Essay, 461. Opinions of philosophers: of Menedemus,
Ariston, Zeno, Chrysippus, 462. Opinion of Plato, 464; of Aristotle,
465. The soul has a twofold nature, 463. It is composed of intellect
or reason, and the passions, 465. The reason and an intelligent
judgment must govern, 466. The passions by long training becoming
subject to the reason, the result is MORAL VIRTUE, 468. Science and
Prudence, what, and their objects, 469. How science and prudence
differ, 469, 470. Prudence has need of deliberation, 470. It corrects
the excesses and defects of passion, 470. Moral virtue is the mean
between excess and defect, 471. Yet it needs the ministry of the
passions, 471. Mean and mediocrity not the same thing, 471. The idea
further illustrated, 472. Continence distinguished from temperance,
473. Incontinence and intemperance, 474. Illustrations, 475, 476.
Moral virtue is firm and immovable, 478. The passions are subject
to frequent and sudden changes, 478. When reason is overborne by
passion, there is a sense of guilt, 479. Reason is not at variance
with itself, 480. The soul is at peace, where passion does not
interpose, 480. Reason tends to what is true and just, 480. Reason,
left to itself, embraces the truth, 481. It is often hindered by
passion, 481. Reason and passion often divide the soul, 482. They
often harmonize and concur, 483. Some philosophers affirm that
reason and passion do not materially differ, 478. Their opinions
controverted, 479, et seq. Their improper use of terms, 484. The
passions differ with their occasions, 486. Men may mistake in
their judgments, 487. The passions, deriving their strength from
the body, are powerful in the young, 489. The state of the body
corresponds with the state of the passions, 490. We should not seek
to exterminate the passions, but to regulate and control them, 490.
The passions have their proper use, 491. These considerations are of
importance in the government of States, and in the education of the
young, 493, 494.

NATURAL QUESTIONS

BY R. BROWN, M.L.

What is the reason that sea-water nourishes not trees? 495. 2. Why
do trees and seeds thrive better with rain than with watering? 496.
3. Why do herdsmen place salt before cattle? 497. 4. Why is the
water of thunder-showers fitter to water seeds? 498. 5. How comes it
to pass that, since there are eight kinds of tastes, we find salt
in no kind of fruit? 498, 499. 6. Why, if a man frequently pass
along dewy trees, are those limbs that touch the wood seized with
leprosy? 500. 7. Why in winter is the sailing of ships more slow in
rivers than in the sea? 500. 8. Why, since all other liquors upon
moving and stirring about grow cold, does the sea by being tossed
in waves grow hot? 501. 9. Why in winter is the saltness of the sea
diminished? 501. 10. Why do men pour sea-water into wine, and in
defect thereof cast in some Zacynthian earth? 502. 11. What is the
cause of sea-sickness? 502. 12. Why does pouring oil on the sea calm
its waves? 503. 13. Why do fishermen’s nets decay more in winter than
in summer? 503. 14. Why do the Dorians pray for bad making of their
hay? 504. 15. Why is rich soil fruitful of wheat, and a thin soil
of barley? 504. 16. Why is it said, Sow wheat in clay and barley in
dust? 505. 17. Why is the hair of horses, rather than of mares, used
for fishing-lines? 505. 18. Why is the sight of a cuttle-fish the
sign of a great storm? 505. 19. Why does the polypus change color?
506. 20. Why are the tears of wild boars sweet, and the tears of the
hart salt and hurtful? 507. 21. Why do tame sows farrow often, some
at one time, and some at other times; and the wild but once a year,
and all about the same time? 508. 22. Why are the paws of bears the
sweetest and pleasantest food? 509. 23. Why are the tracks of wild
beasts found with so much difficulty in spring? 509. 24. Why are
their tracks worse scented about the full moon? 509. 25. Why does
frost make hunting difficult? 510. 26. Why do brutes, when sick, seek
appropriate remedies? 510. 27. Why does must, if the vessel stand in
the cold, long continue sweet? 511. 28. Why, of all wild beasts, does
not the boar bite the toil, though wolves and foxes do this? 512. 29.
Why do we admire natural hot baths, and not cold? 512. 30. Why are
vines which are rank of leaves, but otherwise fruitless, said τραγὰν?
513. 31. Why does the vine irrigated with wine, especially its own
wine, perish? 513. 32. Why, of all trees, does the palm alone bend
upward when a weight is laid on it? 514. 33. Why is pit-water less
nutritive than that which comes from springs, or from the clouds?
514. 34. Why is the west wind commonly held to be the swiftest? 515.
35. Why cannot bees abide smoke? 515. 36. Why will bees sooner sting
persons who have lately committed whoredom? 516. 37. Why do dogs
follow after a stone thrown at them and bite it, letting alone the
man who flung it? 516. 38. Why at a certain time of the year do all
she-wolves bring forth whelps within the compass of twelve days? 517.
39. How comes it that water, apparently white at the top, is black at
the bottom? 518.

INDEX

PLUTARCH’S MORALS.

PLUTARCH’S MORALS.

VOL. III.

WHETHER 'TWERE RIGHTLY SAID, LIVE CONCEALED.

1. It is sure, he that said it had no mind to live concealed, for he spoke it out of a design of being taken notice of for his very saying it, as if he saw deeper into things than every vulgar eye, and of purchasing to himself a reputation, how unjustly soever, by inveigling others into obscurity and retirement. But the poet says right:

I hate the man who makes pretence to wit,
Yet in his own concerns waives using it.[1]

For they tell us of one Philoxenus the son of Eryxis, and Gnatho the Sicilian, who were so over greedy after any dainties set before them, that they would blow their nose in the dish, whereby, turning the stomachs of the other guests, they themselves went away fuller crammed with the rarities. Thus fares it with all those whose appetite is always lusting and insatiate after glory. They bespatter the repute of others, as their rivals in honor, that they themselves may advance smoothly to it and without a rub. They do like watermen, who look astern while they row the boat ahead, still so managing the strokes of the oar that the vessel may make on to its port. So these men who recommend to us such kind of precepts row hard after glory, but with their face another way. To what purpose else need this have been said?—why committed to writing and handed down to posterity? Would he live incognito to his contemporaries, who is so eager to be known to succeeding ages?

2. But besides, doth not the thing itself sound ill, to bid you keep all your lifetime out of the world’s eye, as if you had rifled the sepulchres of the dead, or done such like detestable villany which you should hide for? What! is it grown a crime to live, unless you can keep all others from knowing you do so? For my part, I should pronounce that even an ill-liver ought not to withdraw himself from the converse of others. No; let him be known, let him be reclaimed, let him repent; so that, if you have any stock of virtue, let it not lie unemployed, or if you have been viciously bent, do not by flying the means continue unreclaimed and uncured. Point me out therefore and distinguish me the man to whom you adopt this admonition. If to one devoid of sense, goodness, or wit, it is like one that should caution a person under a fever or raving madness not to let it be known where he is, for fear the physicians should find him, but rather to skulk in some dark corner, where he and his diseases may escape discovery. So you who labor under that pernicious, that scarce curable disease, wickedness, are by parity of reason bid to conceal your vices, your envyings, your superstitions, like some disorderly or feverous pulse, for fear of falling into the hands of them who might prescribe well to you and set you to rights again. Whereas, alas! in the days of remote antiquity, men exhibited the sick to public view, when every charitable passenger who had labored himself under the like malady, or had experienced a remedy on them that did, communicated to the diseased all the receipts he knew; thus, say they, skill in physic was patched up by multiplied experiments, and grew to a mighty art. At the same rate ought all the infirmities of a dissolute life, all the irregular passions of the soul, to be laid open to the view of all, and undergo the touch of every skilful hand, that all who examine into the temper may be able to prescribe accordingly. For instance, doth anger transport you? The advice in that case is, Shun the occasions of it. Doth jealousy torment you? Take this or that course. Art thou love-sick? It hath been my own case and infirmity to be so too; but I saw the folly of it, I repented, I grew wiser. But for those that lie, denying, hiding, mincing, and palliating their vices, it makes them but take the deeper dye, it rivets their faults into them.

3. Again, if on the other hand this advice be calculated for the owners of worth and virtue, if they must be condemned to privacy and live unknown to the world, you do in effect bid Epaminondas lay down his arms, you bid Lycurgus rescind his laws, you bid Thrasybulus spare the tyrants, in a word, you bid Pythagoras forbear his instructions, and Socrates his reasonings and discourses; nay, you lay injunctions chiefly upon yourself, Epicurus, not to maintain that epistolary correspondence with your Asiatic friends, not to entertain your Egyptian visitants, not to be tutor to the youth of Lampsacus, not to present and send about your books to women as well as men, out of an ostentation of some wisdom in yourself more than vulgar, not to leave such particular directions about your funeral. And in fine, to what purpose, Epicurus, did you keep a public table? Why that concourse of friends, that resort of fair young men, at your doors? Why so many thousand lines so elaborately composed and writ upon Metrodorus, Aristobulus, and Chaeredemus, that death itself might not rob us of them; if virtue must be doomed to oblivion, art to idleness and inactivity, philosophy to silence, and all a man’s happiness must be forgotten?

4. But if indeed, in the state of life we are under, you will needs seclude us from all knowledge and acquaintance with the world (as men shut light from their entertainments and drinking-bouts, for which they set the night apart), let it be only such who make it the whole business of life to heap pleasure upon pleasure; let such live recluses all their days. Were I, in truth, to wanton away my days in the arms of your miss Hedeia, or spend them with Leontium, another dear of yours,—were I to bid defiance to virtue, or to place all that’s good in the gratification of the flesh or the ticklings of a sensual pleasure,—these accursed actions and rites would need darkness and an eternal night to veil them; and may they ever be doomed to oblivion and obscurity. But what should they hide their heads for, who with regard to the works of nature own and magnify a God, who celebrate his justice and providence, who in point of morality are due observers of the law, promoters of society and community among all men, and lovers of the public-weal, and who in the administration thereof prefer the common good before private advantage? Why should such men cloister up themselves, and live recluses from the world? For would you have them out of the way, for fear they should set a good example, and allure others to virtue out of emulation of the precedent? If Themistocles’s valor had been unknown at Athens, Greece had never given Xerxes that repulse. Had not Camillus shown himself in defence of the Romans, their city Rome had no longer stood. Sicily had not recovered her liberty, had Plato been a stranger to Dion. Truly (in my mind) to be known to the world under some eminent character not only carries a reputation with it, but makes the virtues in us become practical like light, which renders us not only visible but useful to others. Epaminondas, during the first forty years of his life, in which no notice was taken of him, was an useless citizen to Thebes; but afterwards, when he had once gained credit and the government amongst the Thebans, he both rescued them from present destruction, and freed even Greece herself from imminent slavery, exhibiting (like light, which is in its own nature glorious, and to others beneficial at the same time) a valor seasonably active and serviceable to his country, yet interwoven with his own laurels. For

Virtue, like finest brass, by use grows bright.[2]

And not our houses alone, when (as Sophocles has it) they stand long untenanted, run the faster to ruin; but men’s natural parts, lying unemployed for lack of acquaintance with the world, contract a kind of filth or rust and craziness thereby. For sottish ease, and a life wholly sedentary and given up to idleness, spoil and debilitate not only the body but the soul too. And as close waters shadowed over by bordering trees, and stagnated in default of springs to supply current and motion to them, become foul and corrupt; so, methinks, is it with the innate faculties of a dull unstirring soul,—whatever usefulness, whatever seeds of good she may have latent in her, yet when she puts not these powers into action, when once they stagnate, they lose their vigor and run to decay.

5. See you not how on night’s approach a sluggish drowsiness oft-times seizes the body, and sloth and inactiveness surprise the soul, and she finds herself heavy and quite unfit for action? Have you not then observed how a man’s reason (like fire scarce visible and just going out) retires into itself, and how by reason of its inactivity and dulness it is gently agitated by divers fantastical imaginations, so that nothing remains but some obscure indications that the man is alive.

But when the orient sun brings back the day,
It chases night and dreamy sleep away.

It doth, as it were, bring the world together again, and with his returned light call up and excite all mankind to thought and action; and, as Democritus tells us, men setting themselves every new-spring day to endeavors of mutual beneficence and service one towards another, as if they were fastened in the straitest tie together, do all of them, some from one, some from another quarter of the world, rouse up and awake to action.

6. For my own part, I am fully persuaded that life itself, and our being born at the rate we are, and the origin we share in common with all mankind, were vouchsafed us by God to the intent we should be known to one another. It is true, whilst man, in that little part of him, his soul, lies struggling and scattered in the vast womb of the universe, he is an obscure and unknown being; but, when once he gets hither into this world and puts a body on, he grows illustrious, and from an obscure becomes a conspicuous being; from an hidden, an apparent one. For knowledge does not lead to essence (or being), as some maintain; but the essence of things rather conducts us into the knowledge and understanding thereof. For the birth or generation of individuals gives not any being to them which they had not before, but brings that individual into view; as also the corruption or death of any creature is not its annihilation or reduction into mere nothing, but rather a sending the dissolved being into an invisible state. Hence is it that many persons (conformably to their ancient country laws), taking the Sun to be Apollo, gave him the names of Delius and Pythius (that is, conspicuous and known). But for him, be he either God or Daemon, who hath dominion over the opposite portion, the infernal regions, they call him Hades (that is, invisible)

Emperor of gloomy night and lazy sleep,

for that at our death and dissolution we pass into a state of invisibility and beyond the reach of mortal eyes. I am indeed of opinion, that the ancients called man Phos (that is, light), because from the affinity of their natures strong desires are bred in mankind of continually seeing and being seen to each other. Nay, some philosophers hold the soul itself to be essentially light; which they would prove by this among other arguments, that nothing is so insupportable to the mind of man as ignorance and obscurity. Whatever is destitute of light she avoids, and darkness, the harbor of fears and suspicions, is uneasy to her; whereas, on the other hand, light is so delicious, so desirable a thing, that without that, and wrapped in darkness, none of the delectables in nature are pleasing to her. This makes all our very pleasures, all our diversions and enjoyments, charming and grateful to us, like some universal relishing ingredients mixed with the others to make them palatable. But he that casts himself into obscure retirements, he that sits surrounded in darkness and buries himself alive, seems, in my mind, to repine at his own birth and grudge he ever had a being.

7. And yet it is certain, in the regions prepared for pious souls, they conserve not only an existence in (or agreeable to) nature, but are encircled with glory.

There the sun with glorious ray,
Chasing shady night away,
Makes an everlasting day;
Where souls in fields of purple roses play;
Others in verdant plains disport,
Crowned with trees of every sort,
Trees that never fruit do bear,
But always in the blossom are.[3]

The rivers there without rude murmurs gently glide, and there they meet and bear each other company, passing away their time in commemorating and running over things past and present.

A third state there is of them who have led vicious and wicked lives, which precipitates souls into a kind of hell and miserable abyss,

Where sluggish streams of sable night
Spout floods of darkness infinite.[**duplicate anchor]

This is the receptacle of the tormented; here lie they hid under the veils of eternal ignorance and oblivion. For vultures do not everlastingly gorge themselves upon the liver of a wicked man, exposed by angry Gods upon the earth, as poets fondly feign of Prometheus. For either rottenness or the funeral pile hath consumed that long ago. Nor do the bodies of the tormented undergo (as Sisyphus is fabled to do) the toil and pressure of weighty burdens;

For strength no longer flesh and bone sustains.[4]

There are no reliques of the body in dead men which stripes and tortures can make impressions on; but in very truth the sole punishment of ill-livers is an inglorious obscurity, or a final abolition, which through oblivion hurls and plunges them into deplorable rivers, bottomless seas, and a dark abyss, involving all in uselessness and inactivity, absolute ignorance and obscurity, as their last and eternal doom.

AN ABSTRACT OF A COMPARISON BETWIXT ARISTOPHANES AND MENANDER.

1. To speak in sum and in general, he prefers Menander by far; and as to particulars, he adds what here ensues. Aristophanes, he saith, is importune, theatric, and sordid in his expression; but Menander not so at all. For the rude and vulgar person is taken with the things the former speaketh; but the well-bred man will be quite out of humor with them. I mean, his opposed terms, his words of one cadence, and his derivatives. For the one makes use of these with due observance and but seldom, and bestows care upon them; but the other frequently, unseasonably, and frigidly. “For he is much commended,” said he, “for ducking the chamberlains, they being indeed not chamberlains (ταμίαι) but bugbears (Λαμίαι).” And again,—“This rascal breathes out nothing but roguery and affidavitry;” and “Beat him well in his belly with the entrails and the guts;” and, “I shall laugh till I go to Laughington (Γέλαν);” and, “Thou poor sharded ostracized pot, what shall I do with thee?” and, “To you women surely he is a mad plague, for he grew up himself among these mad worts;”—and, “Look here, how the moths have eaten away my crest;” and, “Bring me hither the gorgon-backed circle of my shield;” “Give me the round-backed circle of a cheese-cake;”—and much more of such like stuff.[5] There is then in the structure of his words something tragic and something comic, something blustering and something prosaic, an obscurity, a vulgarness, a turgidness, and a strutting, with a nauseous prattling and fooling. And as his style has so great varieties and dissonances in it, so neither doth he give to his persons what is fitting and proper to each,—as state (for instance) to a prince, force to an orator, innocence to a woman, meanness of language to a poor man, and sauciness to a tradesman,—but he deals out to every person, as it were by lot, such words as come next to his hand, and you would scarce discern whether he that is talking be a son, a father, a peasant, a God, an old woman, or a hero.

2. But now Menander’s phrase is so well turned and contempered with itself, and so everywhere conspiring, that, while it traverses many passions and humors and is accommodated to all sorts of persons, it still shows the same, and even retains its semblance in trite, familiar, and every-day expressions. And if his master do now and then require something of rant and noise, he doth but (like a skilful flutist) set open all the holes of his pipe, and then presently stop them again with good decorum and restore the tune to its natural state. And though there be a great number of excellent artists of all professions, yet never did any shoemaker make the same sort of shoe, or tireman the same sort of visor, or tailor the same sort of garment, to fit a man, a woman, a child, an old man, and a slave. But Menander hath so addressed his style, as to proportion it to every sex, condition, and age; and this, though he took the business in hand when he was very young, and died in the vigor of his composition and action, when, as Aristotle tells us, authors receive most and greatest improvement in their styles. If a man shall then compare the middle and last with the first of Menander’s plays, he will by them easily conceive what others he would have added to them, had he had but longer life.

3. He adds further, that of dramatic exhibitors, some address themselves to the crowd and populace, and others again to a few; but it is a hard matter to say which of them all knew what was befitting in both the kinds. But Aristophanes is neither grateful to the vulgar, nor tolerable to the wise; but it fares with his poesy as it doth with a courtesan who, when she finds she is now stricken and past her prime, counterfeits a sober matron, and then the vulgar cannot endure her affectation, and the better sort abominate her lewdness and wicked nature. But Menander hath with his charms shown himself every way sufficient for satisfaction, being the sole lecture, argument, and dispute at theatres, schools, and at tables; hereby rendering his poesy the most universal ornament that was ever produced by Greece, and showing what and how extraordinary his ability in language was, while he passes every way with an irresistible persuasion, and wins every man’s ear and understanding who has knowledge of the Greek tongue. And for what other reason in truth should a man of parts and erudition be at the pains to frequent the theatre, but for the sake of Menander only? And when are the play-houses better filled with men of letters, than when his comic mask is exhibited? And at private entertainments among friends, for whom doth the table more justly make room or Bacchus give place than for Menander? To philosophers also and hard students (as painters are wont, when they have tired out their eyes at their work, to divert them to certain florid and green colors) Menander is a repose from their auditors and intense thinkings, and entertains their minds with gay shady meadows refreshed with cool and gentle breezes.

4. He adds, moreover, that though this city breeds at this time very many and excellent representers of comedy, Menander’s plays participate of a plenteous and divine salt, as if they were made of the very sea out of which Venus herself sprang. But that of Aristophanes is harsh and coarse and hath in it an angry and biting sharpness. And for my part I cannot tell where his so much boasted ability lies, whether in his style or persons. The parts he acts I am sure are quite over-acted and depraved. His knave (for instance) is not fine, but dirty; his peasant is not assured, but stupid; his droll is not jocose, but ridiculous; and his lover is not gay, but lewd. So that to me the man seems not to have written his poesy for any temperate person, but to have intended his smut and obscenity for the debauched and lewd, his invective and satire for the malicious and ill-humored.

OF BANISHMENT, OR FLYING ONE’S COUNTRY.

1. One may say of discourses what they use to say of friends, that they are the best and firmest that afford their useful presence and help in calamities. Many indeed present themselves and discourse with those that are fallen into misfortunes, who yet do them more harm than good. Like men that attempt to succor drowning persons and have themselves no skill in diving under water, they entangle one another, and sink together to the bottom. The discourses of friends, such as would help an afflicted person, ought to be directed to the consolation, and not to the patronage of his sorrows. For we have no need in our distresses of such as may bear us company in weeping and howling, like a chorus in a tragedy, but of such as will deal freely with us, and will convince us that,—as it is in all cases vain and foolish and to no purpose to grieve and cast down one’s self,—so, when the things themselves that afflict us, after a rational examination and discovery of what they are, give a man leave to say to himself thus.

Thou feel’st but little pain and smart.
Unless thou’lt feign and act a part,

it would be extremely ridiculous for him not to put the question to his body, and ask it what it has suffered, nor to his soul, and ask how much worse it is become by this accident, but only to make use of those teachers of grief from abroad, who come to bear a part with him in his sorrow, or to express indignation at what has happened.

2. Let us therefore, when we are alone, question with ourselves concerning the things that have befallen us, considering them as heavy loads. The body, we know, is under pressure by a burden lying upon it; but the soul oft-times adds a further weight of her own to things. A stone is hard and ice is cold by nature, not by any thing from without happening to make such qualities and impressions upon them. But as for banishment and disgraces and loss of honors (and so for their contraries, crowns, chief rule, and precedency of place), our opinion prescribing the measure of our joys or sorrows and not the nature of the things themselves, every man makes them to himself light or heavy, easy to be borne or grievous. You may hear Polynices’s answer to this question,

JOCAST. But say, is’t so deplorable a case
To live in exile from one’s native place?
POLYN. It’s sad indeed; and whatsoe’er you guess,
’Tis worse to endure than any can express.[6]

But you may hear Alcman in quite another strain, as the epigrammatist has brought him in saying:

Sardis, my ancient fatherland,
Hadst thou, by Fate’s supreme command,
My helpless childhood nourished,
I must have begg’d my daily bread,
Or else, a beardless priest become,
Have toss’d Cybele frantic down.
Now Alcman I am call’d—a name
Inscribed in Sparta’s lists of fame,
Whose many tripods record bear
Of solemn wreaths and tripods rare,
Achieved in worship at the shrine
Of Heliconian maids divine,
By whose great aid I’m mounted higher
Than Gyges or his wealthy sire.[7]

Thus one man’s opinion makes the same thing commodious, like current money, and another man’s unserviceable and hurtful.

3. But let us grant (as many say and sing) that it is a grievous thing to be banished. So there are also many things that we eat, of a bitter, sharp, and biting taste, which yet by a mixture of other things more mild and sweet have all their unpleasantness taken off. There are also some colors troublesome to look upon, which bear so hard and strike so piercingly upon the sight, that they confound and dazzle it; if now by mixing shadows with them, or by turning our eyes upon some green and pleasant color, we remedy this inconvenience, thou mayst also do the same to the afflictions that befall thee, considering them with a mixture of those advantages and benefits thou still enjoyest, as wealth, friends, vacancy from business, and a supply of all things necessary to human life. For I think there are few Sardians but would desire to be in your condition, though banished, and would choose to live as you may do, though in a strange country, rather than—like snails that grow to their shells—enjoy no other good, saving only what they have at home without trouble.

4. As he therefore in the comedy that advised his unfortunate friend to take heart and to revenge himself of Fortune, being asked which way, answered, By the help of philosophy; so we also may be revenged of her, by acting worthily like philosophers. For what course do we take when it is rainy weather, or a cold north wind blows? We creep to the fireside, or go into a bath, put on more clothes, or go into a dry house; and do not sit still in a shower and cry. It is in thy power above most men’s to revive and cherish that part of thy life which seems to be chill and benumbed, not needing any other helps, but only according to thy best judgment and prudence making use of the things that thou possessest. The cupping-glasses physicians use, by drawing the worst humors out of the body, alleviate and preserve the rest; but they that are prone to grieve and make sad complaints, by mustering together alway the worst of their afflictive circumstances, by debating these things over and over, being fastened (as it were) to their troubles, make the most advantageous things to be wholly useless to themselves, and especially when their case requires most help and assistance. As for those two hogsheads, my friend, which Homer says lie in heaven, full, the one of the good, the other of the ill fates of men,—it is not Jupiter that sits to draw out and transmit to some a moderate share of evils mixed with good, but to others only unqualified streams of evil; but it is we ourselves who do it. Those of us that are wise, drawing out of the good to temper with our evils, make our lives pleasant and potable; but the greater part (which are fools) are like sieves, which let the best pass through, but the worst and the very dregs of misfortune stick to them and remain behind.

5. Wherefore, if we fall into any real evil or calamity, we must bring in what is pleasant and delightful of the remaining good things in our possession, and thus, by what we enjoy at home, mitigate the sense of those evils that befall us from abroad. But where there is no evil in the nature of the things, but the whole of that which afflicts us is framed by imagination and false opinion, in this case we must do just as we deal with children that are apt to be frighted with false faces and vizards; by bringing them nearer, and making them handle and turn them on every side, they are brought at last to despise them; so we, by a nearer touching and fixing our consideration upon our feigned evils, may be able to detect and discover the weakness and vanity of what we fear and so tragically deplore.

Such is your present condition of being banished out of that which you account your country; for nature has given us no country, as it has given us no house or field, no smith’s or apothecary’s shop, as Ariston said; but every one of them is always made or rather called such a man’s by his dwelling in it or making use of it. For man (as Plato says) is not an earthly and unmovable, but a heavenly plant, the head raising the body erect as from a root, and directed upwards toward heaven.[8] Hence is that saying of Hercules:

Am I of Thebes or Argos? Whether
You please, for I’m content with either;
But to determine one, ’tis pity,
In Greece my country’s every city.

But Socrates expressed it better, when he said, he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world (just as a man calls himself a citizen of Rhodes or Corinth), because he did not enclose himself within the limits of Sunium, Taenarum, or the Ceraunian mountains.

Behold how yonder azure sky,
Extending vastly wide and high
To infinitely distant spaces,
In her soft arms our earth embraces.[9]

These are the boundaries of our country, and no man is an exile or a stranger or foreigner in these, where there is the same fire, water, air, the same rulers, administrators, and presidents, the same sun, moon, and daystar; where there are the same laws to all, and where, under one orderly disposition and government, are the summer and winter solstices, the equinoxes, Pleiades, Arcturus, times of sowing and planting; where there is one king and supreme ruler, which is God, who comprehends the beginning, the middle, and end of the universe; who passes through all things in a straight course, compassing all things according to nature: justice follows him to take vengeance on those that transgress the divine law, which justice we naturally all make use of towards all men, as being citizens of the same community.

6. But for thee to complain that thou dost not dwell at Sardis is no objection; for all the Athenians do not inhabit Collytus, nor do all the men of Corinth live in the Cranium, nor all of Lacedaemon in Pitane.

Do you look upon those Athenians as strangers and banished persons who removed from Melite to Diomea,—whence they called the month Metageitnion, and the sacrifices they offered in memory of their removal Metageitnia, being pleased with and cheerfully accepting this new neighborhood to another people? Surely you will not say so. What parts of the inhabited earth or of the whole earth can be said to be far distant one from another, when mathematicians demonstrate that the whole earth is to be accounted as an indivisible point, compared with the heavens? But we, like pismires or bees, when we are cast out of one ant-hill or hive, are in great anxiety, and take on as if we were strangers and undone, not knowing how to make and account all things our own, as indeed they are. We shall certainly laugh at his folly who shall affirm there was a better moon at Athens than at Corinth; and yet we in a sort commit the same error, when being in a strange country we look upon the earth, the sea, the air, the heavens doubtfully, as if they were not the same, but quite different from those we have been accustomed to. Nature in our first production sent us out free and loose; we bind and straiten and pin up ourselves in houses, and reduce ourselves into a scant and little room.

Moreover, we laugh at the kings of Persia, who (if the story be true) will drink only the water of the River Choaspes, by this means making the rest of the habitable world to be without water, as to themselves; but we, when we remove to other countries, and retain our longings after Cephissus and Eurotas, and are pleased with nothing so much as the hills Taygetus and Parnassus, we make the whole earth unhabitable to ourselves, and are without a house or city where we can dwell.

7. 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.[10]

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.

8. 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 good 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.[11]

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;[12]

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.[13]

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.

11. When Zeno was told that the only ship he had remaining was cast away at sea with all her lading, he replied: Well done Fortune, that hast reduced me to the habit and life of a philosopher. And, indeed, a man that is not puffed up with conceit nor madly in love with a crowd will not, I suppose, have any reason to accuse Fortune for constraining him to live in an island, but will rather commend her for removing so much anxiety and agitation of his mind, for putting a stop to his rambles in foreign countries, to his dangers at sea, and the noise and tumult of the exchange, and for giving him a fixed, vacant, undisturbed life, such a life as he may truly call his own, describing as it were a circle about him, in which is contained the use of all things necessary. For what island is there that has not a horse, a walk, and a bath in it; that has not fishes and hares for such as delight in hunting and angling and such like sports? But the chiefest of all is, that the quiet which others thirst so much after thou commonly mayst have here without seeking. For those that are gamesters at dice, shutting up themselves at home, there are sycophants and busy spies that hunt them out, and prosecute them from their houses of pleasure and gardens in the suburbs, and hale them by violence before the judges or the court. But none sails to an island to give a man any disturbance, no petitioner, no borrower, no urger to suretyship, no one that comes to beg his voice when he stands candidate for an office; only the best friends and familiars, out of good-will and desire to see him, may come over thither; and the rest of his life is safe and inviolable to him, if he has the will and the skill to live at ease. But he that cries up the happiness of those that run about in other countries, or spend the most of their life in inns and passage-boats, is no wiser than he is that thinks the planets in a better estate than the fixed stars. And yet every planet rolling about in its proper sphere, as in an island, keeps its order. For the sun never transgresses its limited measures, as Heraclitus says; if it did do so, the Furies, which are the attendants of Justice, would find it out and punish it.

12. These things, my friend, and such like we say and sing to those who, by being banished into an island, have no correspondence or commerce with other people,

Hindered by waves of the surrounding deep,
Which many ’gainst their mind close prisoners keep.[14]

But as for thee, who art not assigned to one place only, but forbidden only to live in one, the prohibiting thee one is the giving thee leave to dwell anywhere else besides. If on one hand it is urged thus against you: You are in no office, you are not of the senate, nor preside as moderator at the public games, you may oppose on the other hand thus: We head no factions, we make no expensive treats, nor give long attendance at the governor’s gates; we care not at all who is chosen into our province, though he be choleric or unsufferably vexatious.

But just as Archilochus disparaged the island of Thasos because of its asperity and inequality in some places overlooking its fruitful fields and vineyards, saying thus of it,

Like ridge of ass’s back it stood,
Full of wild plants, for nothing good;

so we, whilst we pore upon one part of banishment which is ignominious, overlook its vacancy from business, and that leisure and freedom it affords us.

Men admired the happiness of the Persian kings, that passed their winter in Babylon, their summer in Media, and the pleasant spring-time at Susa. And he that is an exile may, if he pleases, when the mysteries of Ceres are celebrated, go and live at Eleusis; and he may keep the feasts of Bacchus at Argos; at the time of the Pythian games, he may pass over to Delphi, and of the Isthmian, to Corinth, if public spectacles and shows are the things he admires; if not, then he may be idle, or walk, or read, or sleep quietly; and you may add that privilege Diogenes bragged of when he said, “Aristotle dines when it seems good to King Philip, but Diogenes when he himself pleases,” having no business, no magistrate, no prefect to interrupt and disturb his customary way of living.

13. For this reason, you will find that very few of the most prudent and wise men were buried in their own country, but the most of them, when none forced them to it, weighed anchor and steered their course to live in another port, removing some to Athens, and others from it.

Who ever gave a greater encomium of his own country than Euripides in the following verses?

We are all of this country’s native race,
Not brought-in strangers from another place,
As some, like dice hither and thither thrown,
Remove in haste from this to t’other town.
And, if a woman may have leave to boast,
A temperate air breathes here in every coast;
We neither curse summer’s immoderate heat,
Nor yet complain the winter’s cold’s too great.

If aught there be that noble Greece doth yield,
Or Asia rich, by river or by field,
We seek it out and bring it to our doors.

And yet he that wrote all this went himself into Macedonia, and passed the rest of his days in the court of Archelaus. I suppose you have also heard of this short epigram:

Here lieth buried Aeschylus, the son
Of the Athenian Euphorion;
In Sicily his latest breath did yield,
And buried lies by Gela’s fruitful field.