ess 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