given them by fortune, whereby
they obtained universal fame after their deaths, whereas no memorial is
left of those who were factious against them and banished them.

Sec. XV. He therefore is ridiculous who thinks that any ignominy attaches
itself to exile. What say you? Was Diogenes without glory, whom
Alexander saw basking in the sun, and stopped to ask if he wanted
anything, and when he answered, "Nothing, but that you would get a
little out of my light," Alexander, astonished at his spirit, said to
his friends, "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes." Was
Camillus without glory when banished from Rome, of which he is now
accounted the second founder? And indeed Themistocles did not lose by
his exile the glory he had obtained among the Greeks, but he added to it
among the barbarians, and there is no one so without honour, so ignoble,
who would prefer to be Leobates who indicted him rather than
Themistocles the exile, or Clodius who banished Cicero rather than the
banished one, or Aristophon the accuser rather than Timotheus who got
driven by him from his country.

Sec. XVI. But since a good many are moved by the lines of Euripides, who
seems to bring a strong indictment against exile, let us see what it is
he says in each question and answer about it.

_Jocasta._ What is't to be an exile? Is it grievous?

_Polynices._ Most grievous, and in deed worse than in word.

_Jocasta._ What is its aspect? What is hard for exiles?

_Polynices._ This is the greatest, that they have no freedom.

_Jocasta._ This is a slave's life not to speak one's thoughts!

_Polynices._ Then one must put up with one's masters' follies.[934]

But this is not a right or true estimate.[935] For first of all, not to
say out all one thinks is not the action of a slave but of a sensible
man, in times and matters that require reticence and silence, as
Euripides himself has said elsewhere better,

"Be silent where 'tis meet, speak where 'tis safe."

Then as for the follies of one's masters, one has to put up with them
just as much in one's own country as in exile. Indeed, more frequently
have the former reason to fear that the powerful in cities will act
unjustly to them either through calumny or violence. But his greatest
and absurdest error is that he takes away from exiles freedom of speech.
It is wonderful, if Theodorus had no freedom of speech, that when
Lysimachus the king said to him, "Did not your country cast yo