§ 21  Perhaps in response to the man who thinks that exile makes people less competent could aptly be brought up as a comparison the matter of skills. Because, just as it is impossible for a man to be a worse flute-player or actor because he is in a foreign land, so neither is he a worse advisor. And to the man who believes that for some other reason exile is detrimental, let nothing be said contrary to the writing of Stilpon which I also mentioned the other day:

§ 22  “What do you mean?” he says, “From what goods [or] from what sort of goods does exile deprive one? Those of the soul or body or of the external ones? Prudence, proper conduct, success, does exile deprive you of these?
Of course not!
Well, surely it does not deprive you of courage, righteousness, or any other virtue?
This neither.
Well, surely it does not deprive you of any of the bodily goods? Or aren't good health, strength, keen eyesight and keen hearing the same if a person is in a foreign land? Sometimes aren't they even better [than] if he remains at home?
Very true.
Well, exile does not deprive one of the external goods, does it? Or don't their affairs, in so far as the property of such people is concerned, seem to have become more prominent for many once they have become exiles? Or didn't Phoenix, when he was driven from Dolopia by Amyntor, go into exile in Thessaly?
To Peleus I came,
He made me rich, assigned me many folk.
And the famous Themistocles says 'Son, we would have been done for if we had not been done in.'

§ 23   But nowadays there is a great abundance of such examples. Of what sort of goods, then, does exile deprive, or of what evil is it the cause? For I certainly don't see. Indeed, we bury ourselves in many places and become exiles even while remaining in our own land.
They (sc. exiles) do not rule, people say; they are not trusted; they do not have freedom of speech. But some do command garrisons in cities for kings; and they are entrusted with nations, and they receive great gifts and tributes. Didn't that famous Lycinus command a garrison among us when he was an exile from Italy and was trusted by Antigonus, and didn't we carry out Lycinus' commands though we remained in our own land? Doesn't Hippomedon the Lacedaemonian, now hold an appointment in Thrace under Ptolemy? And aren't the Athenians Chremonides and Glaucon assessors and advisers of Ptolemy, to pass over ancient examples and use those of our own day? And finally, wasn't he dispatched on such a mission and entrusted with as much money and with as much authority as he might wish to use?
But exiles do not rule in their own country.

§ 24   Well, neither do women who stay at home, nor boys, nor these young men here, nor those who are past their prime. But this is not annoying to them, is it? And if they were grieved over this, wouldn't they be effeminate? Yet what is the difference between being a ruler and being a private citizen?
You are king over many—and those in the prime of life; but I over just a few—and they immature boys, since I am a teacher--, and finally of myself.
For with the same know-how, whether you manage the masses or the individual, whether you serve in public or work at home, whether you are in a foreign land or remain in your own land, it is equally possible with the same good planning to gain advantage from the political office and from one's private life. So what difference will it make to me if I am not to be a ruler but am to be a private citizen?
But you will not have the right to enter your own land.
Well, even now I do not have the right to enter the Thesmophorion, nor do women have the right to enter the temple of Enyalius, nor will we have the right to enter forbidden holy places.

§ 25  But if anyone should be upset over this, wouldn't he be childish? Sometimes I do not have the right to go even into the gymnasium, but I have gone off to the bath and anointed myself with the same wrestling-school stuff which I have used before in the gymnasium. In the same way I have hitherto considered my own land impossible to walk upon, and I have changed residence and now am settling down elsewhere. And just as if changing from one ship to another I can have the same fair sailing, so I can change from one city to another and have the same happiness. At any rate, there is not one bit of misfortune or disgrace for me, unless I dwell with wicked men. Or is the disgrace mine rather than theirs who expelled me though I was fair and just? Not inept was Philemon's remark. For once when he had been involved in a legal action and had gotten off honorably, some men met him and said, ”How lucky you have been, Philemon!" He replied, “You feel that way because you have been spectators, but I think so because I continue to be a good man.”
What, then? Isn't it drunken folly to be exiled by inferiors?

§ 26   Would you, he replied, want to be exiled by good and noble men? Or isn't this the gist of your complaint? For noble men exile no one in a hard-hearted and unjust manner. For then they would not be just.
Then it is no disgrace to be surpassed in the voting and balloting by such men?
Certainly not yours. Rather the disgrace belongs to those who vote for and elect these men. It is just as if they dismissed the best physician and chose a druggist and placed the public task in his hands. Would you say that this disgrace and misfortune belong to the physician or to those who made the choice? Well, at any rate, there is this: To have discovered that one's native land, for which he has labored so much, is knavish and thankless: how is this not a misfortune?

§ 27   Nonsense I How would this be a misfortune? Indeed, it is not, if one must say that it is good fortune to have learned someone's character when he did not know it before. Yet if you learned that your wife was wicked and treacherous, though you did not know it before, you would be gratified. And if you learned that your servant was a runaway and a thief, you would be gratified so that you could take precautions. Yet, if you have learned that your native land is wicked and thankless, do you consider it a misfortune instead of feeling gratitude?
But still, it seems a great thing to me to live in the land where one has been born and bred.'
Would you [continue to live] in the house in which you were bred and born even if it is rotten and crumbling and falling down? And would you remain on a ship on which you were born and sailed from boyhood, even if it were a little boat, and not, if you had to burst your gut rowing, change over willingly and without reluctance to a twenty-oared ship? And people use it as a reproach because someone is from Cythera or Myconos or Belbina. But still, they say that it is a good thing for anyone to live out his life in the land in which he was born and bred, and that, though most of the cities are pernicious and the inhabitants impious, one's native land is still a great and comforting thing just for itself.

§ 28  But many also use it as a reproach that someone is a metic, saying, You metic, Though you're no native, you hold this city enslaved.
And you admire Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, but you reproach me unless [I am] a citizen? And we commend Heracles for having become a leading man, but we consider being a metic a matter of reproach? Yet Heracles settled down at Thebes after being exiled from Argos. The Lacedaemonians consider none of the things like this to be a matter of reproach. Instead, the man who has shared their way of life and has remained true, whether he is a foreigner or the son of a helot, they honor on a par with their best men. But the man who does not remain true, even if he is the son of the king himself, they relegate to the helots, and such a man has no share in the state.

§ 29  But not being allowed burial in one's own land, how is that not a reproach?
And just how is this going to be a reproach which often happens to the best men? Or what honor is this which is available to the worst men? Indeed, people commend Socrates when in his attack on the Athenians he says, “The generals in whom they pride themselves have been buried outside the borders, but the disgraces of the democracy have been buried in public graves. Yet burial in a foreign land is a disgrace, but in public graves it is an honor? But what difference would there seem to be between burial in a foreign land and in one's own land? For not inept was the remark of a certain Attic exile. When someone railed at him and said, ”Why, you won't even be buried in your own land, but like those Athenians who are impious, you'll be buried in Megarian soil," he replies, “Indeed, just like those Megarians who are pious, in Megarian soil.” For what is the difference? “Or isn't the road to Hades's realm,” asks Aristippus, “equal and alike from any direction?”

§ 30   Or, in the first place, what does it matter to you if you are not to buried? “Indeed, the anguish over burial,” says Bion, “has composed many tragedies.” Just as even Polyneices commands:
But bury me, Mother and you my sister,
In my ancestral land, and calm the angry City, so that I win at least this much
Of my ancestral soil, though I've lost home.
But if you should not “win your ancestral soil” but be buried in a foreign land, what will be the difference? Or is it from Thebes that Charon ferries to Hades' realm...
Tis good to lie beneath a mound of one's own land.

§ 31   But if you should not be buried but be tossed out without a grave, what is so annoying about that? Or what is the difference in being burnt up by fire, eaten up by a dog or being devoured by ravens above the ground or by worms below?
And close my eyelids fast with your own hand, Mother.
But should she not “close your eyelids fast,” and you should die stark and staring, what will be the difficulty? Or does anyone close the eyes of those who die at sea or in wars? But to me at least these matters seem mere childish play