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Neither does banishment deprive geometricians or mathematicians of the liberty of discoursing freely concerning matters they know and have skill in; and why should any worthy or good man be denied it? But meanness of thought obstructs and hinders the voice, strangles the power of speech, and makes a man a mute. But let us see what follows from Euripides: JOC. Upon good hopes exiles can thrive, they say. POL. Hopes have fine looks, but kill one with delay.Eurip. Phoeniss. 396. This is also an accusation of men’s folly rather than of banishment; for it is not the well instructed and those that know how to use what they have aright, but such as depend upon what is to come and desire what they have not, that are carried and tossed up and down by hopes, as in a floating vessel, though they have scarce ever stirred beyond the gates of their own city. But to go on: JOC. Did not your father’s friends aid your distress? POL. Take care to thrive; for if you once are poor, Those you call friends will know you then no more. JOC. Did not your high birth stand you in some stead? POL. It’s sad to want, for honor buys no bread. These also are ungrateful speeches of Polynices, who accuses banishment as casting disparagement upon noble birth and leaving a man without friends, who yet because of his high birth was thought worthy, though an exile, to have a king’s daughter given him in marriage, and also by the powerful assistance of his friends gathered such an army as to make war against his own country, as he confesses himself a little after: Many a famous Grecian peer And captain from Mycenae here ’In readiness t’ assist me tarry; Sad service ’tis, but necessary. Ibid., 430 and 344 Neither are the words of his lamenting mother any wiser: No nuptial torch at all I lighted have To thee, as doth a wedding-feast beseem; No marriage-song was sung; nor thee to lave Was water brought from fair Ismenus’ stream. She ought to have been well pleased and rejoiced when she heard that her son dwelt in such kingly palaces; but, whilst she laments that the nuptial torch was not lighted, and the want of waters from Ismenus’s river for him to have bathed in (as if people at Argos were destitute both of fire and water at their weddings), she makes those evils, which her own conceit and folly produced, to be the effects of banishment.
