Furthermore, it is not at all
necessary for exiles to suffer ill repute because of their banishment, since
everyone knows that many trials are badly judged and many people are unjustly
banished from their country, and that in the past there have been cases of good
men who have been exiled by their countrymen, as for example from Athens
Aristides the Just, and from Ephesus Hermodorus, because of whose banishment
Heraclitus bade the Ephesians, every grown man of them, to go hang themselves.
In fact some exiles even became
very famous, as Diogenes of Sinope and Clearchus, the Lacedaemonian, who with Cyrus
marched against Artaxerxes, not to mention more.
How, pray, could this condition
in which some people have become more renowned than before be responsible for
ill-repute?
Reputation can be a tricky thing, sometimes far
more so than money. I see that fame can follow from character, but also that it
often accompanies iniquity. It feels like character and esteem should go
together, and yet some who receive it don’t deserve it, and some who deserve it
don’t receive it. It really all depends on who is giving it, and why it is
given.
I may become confused about what is truly good and
what is merely indifferent, about how the lower must in the service of the
higher, about how all other conditions only become beneficial through wisdom
and virtue. I will foolishly flip around the necessary with the preferred.
Attempting to correct myself, recognizing that no
further external reward is required for an internal merit, I can go too far in
the other direction. I am then tempted to disregard honor entirely, along with
wealth, power, or pleasure, as being closed to me. Instead of thinking of fame
as morally neutral, I might begin to view it as something bad in itself, or at
the very least as something that will never come my way.
Yet this does not need to be the case. Being a good
man does not mean I might not also be admired, and being an exile does not mean
I might not also be respected. Put in its proper context, life will continually
provide me with opportunities to win praise. As long as I don’t pursue them for
their own sake, I should neither reject them, nor should I assume that they are
going to be withheld from me.
I suggest that much of what Musonius is doing in
this lecture is trying to deter us from what we would now call a “victim
mentality”. A change of circumstance or place does not need to make me fail as
a human being, and it does not even need to make me fail in the eyes of my
fellows.
Whatever may happen, good people will still recognize
and respect the good they find in others. What the wicked think should not move
us in any event.
Aristides of Athens may have found himself
ostracized because of his conflicts with Themistocles, but he still maintained the
integrity of his character. I have always liked the story that Aristides helped
an illiterate citizen by writing down his own name on the ballot in favor of his
exile. He later ended up returning to Athens, winning even greater glory in the
war against the Persians.
For the followers of philosophy, Diogenes is once
again an ideal example of the sort of fellow who still won the admiration of
others, even when what he said and did was hardly intended to win any favor. Being
ripped from his home two times, once from Sinope and once from Athens, couldn’t
keep him from making his name.
In the simplest of terms, I should never assume
that everything is lost, just because everything is different. I will still always
have myself, and in the process of living up to myself, I may even manage to be
recognized for who I am. If I am ever thought of well, let me hope it is by a
few decent folks, and not by the scoundrels.
Written in 12/2016
IMAGE: Aristides the Just
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