sea waves, which many keep apart."[931]

But you who are not tied down to one spot, but only forbidden to live in
one, have by that prohibition liberty to go to all others. Moreover to
the considerations, I am not in office, or a member of the senate, or an
umpire in the games, you may oppose these, I do not belong to any
faction, I have no large sums to spend, I have not to dance attendance
at the doors of the prefect, it is no odds to me who has got by lot the
province, whether he is hot-tempered or an objectionable person. But
just as Archilochus overlooked the fruitful fields and vineyards of
Thasos, and abused that island as rocky and uneven, and said of it,

"It stands like donkey's chine crowned with wild forest,"

so we, fixing our eyes only on one aspect of exile, its inglorious
state, overlook its freedom from cares, its leisure, its liberty. And
yet people thought the kings of Persia happy, because they passed their
winter in Babylon, their summer in Media, and the pleasant season of
spring at Susa. So can the exile be present at the Eleusinian mysteries,
at the festival of Dionysus at Athens, at the Nemean games at Argos, at
the Pythian games at Delphi, and can pass on and be a spectator of the
Isthmian and Corinthian games, if he is fond of sight-seeing; and if
not, he has leisure, can walk about, read, sleep without being
disturbed, and can say like Diogenes, "Aristotle has to dine when Philip
thinks fit, Diogenes can dine at any time he himself chooses," having no
business, or magistrate, or prefect, to put him out of his general
habits of living.

Sec. XIII. And so it is that you will find few of the wisest and most
intelligent men buried in their own countries, but most (even without
any compulsion) have themselves weighed anchor, and transferred their
course, and removed, some to Athens, some from it. For who ever bestowed
such encomium upon his country as Euripides did in the following lines?

"First we are not a race brought in from other parts,
But are indigenous, when all other cities
Are, draughts-men like, transferred from place to place,
And are imported from elsewhere. And, lady,
If it is not beside the mark to boast,
We have above us a well-tempered sky,
A climate not too hot, nor yet too cold.
And all the finest things in Greece or Asia
We do procure as an attraction here."[932]

And yet the author of these lines went to Macedonia, and lived all the
latter