u out
because of your character?" replied, "Yes, as Semele cast out Dionysus,
when unable to bear him any longer." And when he showed him Telesphorus
in a cage,[936] with his eyes scooped out, and his nose and ears and
tongue cut off, and said to him, "This is how I treat those that act ill
to me." * *[937] And had not Diogenes freedom of speech, who, when he
visited Philip's camp just as he was on the eve of offering battle to
the Greeks, and was taken before the king as a spy, told him he had come
to see his insatiable folly, who was going shortly to stake his
dominions and life on a mere die. And did not Hannibal the Carthaginian
use freedom of speech to Antiochus, though he was an exile, and
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 kindn