Wandering Greeks (6 page)

Oratory

With good reason, given their personal agenda, defendants in Athenian lawsuits commonly described exile as a fate worse than death. “If I go into exile as a result of your verdict,” says a fictitious defendant, “I shall become a beggar in a foreign country, an old man who is
apolis
,”
First
Tetralogy
2.9). “No fate is worse than having nowhere to go, being without a city-state, enduring hardship every day, and being unable to look after one's family,” says the representative of a group of Plataean exiles who are seeking to settle in Athens (Isoc. 14.55).

The most detailed account of a refugee's existence is found in Isocrates's
Aegineticus
, so-named because it was written on behalf of an unnamed political exile from Siphnus, who had been granted permanent residence in Aegina. In it the speaker describes what happened to his family when they sought to settle at Troezen (19.22–23):

As soon as we arrived we succumbed to such severe diseases that I myself only just survived, though within thirty days I buried my young sister who was just fourteen years old, and not five days later I buried my mother as well. Previously in my life I had not known suffering, but now I had experienced both exile and having to live among foreigners as an alien. I'd lost my fortune, and in addition I'd witnessed my mother and my sister being expelled from their homeland and ending their lives among strangers in a foreign land.

Though the speaker has good reason to play on the sympathies of the jury, the tragedy he describes—that of the more vulnerable refugees, women especially, perishing from sickness or exhaustion soon after their departure—must have been all too familiar.

When he was not earning money from fee-paying exiles by writing on their behalf, however, Isocrates was far from sympathetic to the plight of migrants. In a panegyric composed in ca. 370 he heaped praise on Evagoras, king of Salamis on Cyprus, who, after fleeing from the island to avoid being assassinated, “despised the wandering existence of exiles, the way they seek help from others in order to facilitate their return, and the manner in which they ingratiate themselves with those who are inferior” (9.28). To escape such a fate Evagoras took matters into his own hands and succeeded in returning to Cyprus with the aid of some fifty companions. Commendable though it no doubt was, Evagoras's enterprise was hardly an example that the average exile could hope to emulate. In other political pamphlets Isocrates makes it clear that he
has nothing but fear and loathing for the vast majority of refugees, on the grounds that they present a threat to the stability of civilized society.

Philosophy

The condition of the exile provided a fertile source of comment for philosophers of various persuasions. Democritus of Abdera (b. 460–57), who is jointly credited with Leucippus as the inventor of atomist philosophy, is said to have declared, evidently with pride, “I have wandered more extensively than anyone of my generation” (68 B 299.6–8 DK). Aristotle's successor Theophrastus took this to mean that Democritus considered himself to be richer than Odysseus and Menelaus combined—the two most famous wanderers of legend—on the grounds that he had become a true philosopher because of his travels, whereas they had merely acquired a heap of treasure (68 A 16
DK
= Ael.
VH
4.20). Pythagoras was also “a great wanderer,” who visited Egypt, Babylon, Delos, and Crete, before finally establishing his philosophical school in Croton (Porph.
Vit. Pythag
. 6–21; D.L. 8.2–3).

The Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope (ca. 412/403–ca. 324/21), quoting from a lost tragedy, described himself as “a man who is
apolis
[without a city], a man who is
aoikos
[without a home], a man deprived of his fatherland, a beggar, a wanderer, a man who lives from day to day” (D.L. 6.38 =
TGF, Adesp
. 284). Since the Cynics believed in the principle of living according to nature, this state of being did not, as he saw it, constitute a handicap. On the contrary, he claimed to have benefited from the change of perspective that homelessness had bestowed upon him. When someone was abusing him for being an exile, Diogenes is said to have replied, “It was my exile that turned me into a philosopher, you jerk!” (D.L. 6.49). In other words, his period in exile had liberated him not only from the constraints of the
polis
but also from dependency on the civic order, thereby enabling him to achieve his anti-political goal of self-sufficiency. Even so, the benefit to the soul has to be weighed against the inevitable wear and tear on the body. Though the testimony is of dubious authenticity, the elderly Plato is said to have
declined an invitation to leave Athens and give advice about founding a colony on the grounds that the frailty of his age prevented him from “wandering about and running the kinds of risks that one encounters both on land and at sea” (Ep.11.358e 6–8)

Plato's pupil Aristotle deemed the wanderer to be outside the human fold. He wrote (
Pol
. 1.1253a3–7):

He who is without a city-state by nature and not by circumstance is either a rogue or greater than a human being. He resembles the man “without a phratry, without laws, and without a hearth” who is reviled by Homer (Il.9.63–64), for he is by nature without a city-state and he yearns for bloody war. He is analogous to an isolated counter in a game of draughts.

Aristotle, it seems, was incapable of conceiving an acceptable alternative to a polis-centered life. And since the
polis
was a civilized and indeed civilizing force, the exile, having to fight for his survival on a daily basis, was in his view reduced to the condition of a brute animal. To make matters worse, such a person threatened the security of the
polis
to which he formerly belonged by yearning for “bloody civil war,” since only as the result of an overthrow of the governing faction could he eventually hope to return to his homeland.

In his
Encomium of Helen
, probably dated 370, Isocrates chastised the sophists “for daring to assert that the life of beggars and refugees is more enviable than that of the rest of us.” He continued, “They use this as proof that if they can speak to good effect on a worthless subject, then they'll have plenty to say about a subject which has real merit” (10.8). In other words, if sophists have the skill to refute what is blindingly obvious—that the life of the refugee is the most wretched condition imaginable—then there is no argument under the sun that they cannot prove or disprove. His comments make clear that the philosophical genre of consolation was already well-established by the first half of the fourth century, even though no extended example has survived from this period. It was to last for well over half a millennium.

The lot of those Greeks who were driven into exile was compounded of uncertainty, danger, hardship, and privation. All this, however, was
nothing to a man of solid moral fiber. “Cheer up and get a grip of yourself. It isn't such a bad thing being an exile, especially if you put on a brave face. You might even see it as a welcome challenge to the fortitude you've developed all your life.” That is because exile is primarily a state of mind, rather than a physical state of being. The evils that it visits upon an individual are therefore surmountable, partly by other attendant goods that one may possess to offset them and partly by a positive mental attitude. The first surviving treatise of this kind is by a Cynic philosopher called Teles, who flourished in ca. 235 BCE (pp. 21.2–30.1, Hense 1909). Though its composition lies outside the period covered by this survey, the arguments are likely to have been well-rehearsed, since, as we have just noted, the genre was already a century and a half old. Teles first sets up the proposition that exile, far from harming a man's soul or his body or even his possessions, actually gives him the opportunity to improve his material circumstances, as the lives of the mythical Phoenix and the historical Themistocles demonstrate. He then refutes a number of objections that might be raised to his proposition. For instance, in response to the claim that exiles are deprived of freedom of speech, Teles argues that many of them do indeed enjoy influence with foreign potentates; to the objection that exiles are not permitted to return home, he replies that no one alive has complete freedom of movement; and to the argument that exiles must suffer the disgrace of being buried abroad, he points out that this is the fate of many of the best men. He then ridicules Polyneices' request to be buried in his native Thebes, given the fact that his body will either rot or be scavenged wherever it lies (Eur.
Phoen
. 1447–50).

The longest surviving example in the genre is Plutarch's treatise
On Exile
. We do not know the addressee's identity for certain, but it is likely that his name was Menemachus, a native of Sardis in Lydia, who passed a portion of his exile in Athens at the end of the first century CE. Rather in the manner of a preacher delivering a sermon, Plutarch takes his cue from Euripides's
Phoenician Women
(l. 388–89):

What's it like to be deprived of one's city? Is it a terrible misfortune? It's the greatest misfortune—greater than can be put into words.

He then seeks to demonstrate that exile, far from being an unbearable condition, is actually superior to any other kind of existence (
Mor
. 599f– 600a):

Suppose we assume that exile is something terrible, as the hoi polloi claim both in their conversations and in their verses … it is still possible to blend misfortune with what is valuable and pleasant in your present circumstances, namely abundance, friends, freedom from politics, and the necessities of life…. I bet that there are many citizens of Sardis who would prefer your situation, and be happy to exist on these terms in a foreign land, rather than be like snails that are glued to their shells and have nothing else of value or pleasure except for a home.

Urging fortitude and good cheer, Plutarch puts forth the bold proposition that “There is no such thing as one's native land by nature,” on the grounds that “we are merely the occupants and users” of wherever we happen to be currently residing. Quoting Socrates' description of himself as a global citizen, Plutarch proclaims that the overarching sky, “within which no-one is an exile or an alien,” constitutes the boundaries of a philosopher's real native land. He continues:

By nature we are free and unconstrained. It is we who tie ourselves down, constrain ourselves, confine ourselves, and herd ourselves into uncomfortable and unhealthy quarters. Wherever a man has moderate means to live well, he is neither without a city nor a hearth, nor is he a foreigner.

Plutarch quotes from a certain Stratonicus, who inquired of his host on the tiny island of Seriphus what crime was punished there with exile. On learning that those guilty of fraud were exiled, he quipped, “So why don't you commit fraud and get out of this confinement.” He claims that it is the exile who is truly blessed by fortune, since “the man who has one city is a stranger and a foreigner to all the rest” (600e–602b).

He then goes on to extol the advantages of the life of withdrawal, which include walking, reading and—joy of joys!—uninterrupted sleep. Few men of good sense and wisdom have died in their native lands, he
claims, whether voluntarily or under compulsion. Next he lists exiles from legend and myth, including Theseus, Cadmus, and Apollo (602c– 606d). Finally, moving to a higher philosophical plane, he glosses an observation by Empedocles of Acragas (ca. 492–32)—“I too am an exile from the gods and a wanderer” (31 B 115
DK
)—as follows:

All of us … are
metanastai
[migrants] and
xenoi
[strangers] and
phugades
[exiles] here … and it is truest to say that the soul is in exile and wanders, driven by divine ordinances and decrees.

Plutarch's treatise is a rhetorical
tour de force
, which seeks to prove what is counterintuitive in order to demonstrate the power invested in the human mind to shape its own destiny—or at least to shape its response to its own destiny. For all its speciousness it is not without the power to move by its eloquent and uplifting pleading. Dimly emerging from its paradoxical and contorted reasoning is the vision of a world stripped of boundaries that has a very modern ring to it, however far we may still be from achieving that ideal. That said, it is obvious that Plutarch, like so many others we have discussed, is analyzing exile from a position of privilege. His argument would have offered scant consolation to the vast majority of refugees, many of whom departed from their homelands with only enough food to keep them going for a few days. Even the well-heeled must have suffered some loss of status and income when they were deprived of their citizenship, as Polyneices had hinted at—a fact that Plutarch studiously ignores (Seibert 1979, 377).

Myth and Legend

From the fifth century BCE onward, and perhaps earlier, those Greeks who identified themselves as belonging to the Dorian ethnic group saw themselves as the product of a population movement that had taken place generations ago, and they fashioned a myth of exile and relocation to give that movement substance. As Herodotus wrote, “The Dorians were a people who wandered extensively” (1.56.2). He was referring to
the notion that the Dorians were descended from the Heraclidae (or descendants of Heracles), whose ancestors had been driven into exile from the Peloponnese following the death of their founding father.

In light of what we have seen up to now about the status and condition of the wanderer, the belief that one's ancestors had returned to a land from which they had once been exiled or fled might seem to amount to a humiliating admission of ethnic inferiority. To have been forced to leave one's home for whatever reason conjures up notions of subservience, failure, and defeat—a hardly inspiring cultural inheritance to be burdened with. There was, however, a very different way of looking at it. From a propagandistic standpoint the claim that one's ancestors had in the dim and distant past been driven from their homeland could be turned to considerable political and ideological advantage: first, it served to exemplify their resolve and capacity for endurance, in that they had proven, over the course of several generations, their ability to survive against great odds; and second, it constituted proof that the gods had looked favorably upon their enterprise. Not for nothing the semi-divine Heracles became a god. The fact, moreover, that the Dorian Greeks thought of the migratory movement as a “return,” was profoundly suggestive. It meant that their ancestors were not immigrants, far less invaders. These were exiles, returning to take possession of what was justly and indissolubly theirs.