Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/419

Rh hath granted and allowed him to make choice of that which may please and content him. And verily, the precept of the Pythagoreans serveth to right good stead in this case to be practised: Choose (say they) the best life; use and custom will make it pleasant enough unto thee. To this purpose also it may be wisely and with great profit said: Make choice of the best and most pleasant city, time will cause it to be thy native country, and such a native country as shall not distract and trouble thee with any business, nor impose upon thee these and such-like exactions: Make payment and contribute to this levy of money: Go in embassage to Rome: Receive such a captain or ruler into thine house, or take such a charge upon thee at thine own expenses.

Now he that calleth these things to remembrance, if he have any wit in his head, and be not over-blind every way in his own opinion and self-conceit, will wish and choose, if he be banished out of his own country, to inhabit the very isle Gyaros, or the rough and barren island Cinarus, where trees or plants do hardly grow, without complaining with grief of heart, without lamenting and breaking out into these plaints and womanly moans, reported by the poet Simonides in these words:

but rather he will bear in mind and discourse with himself the speech that Philip, King of Macedonia, sometime delivered: for when his hap was in the wrestling place to fall backward and lie along on the ground; after he was up again upon his feet, and saw the whole proportion and print of his body in the dust of the floor: Hercules (quoth he), what a small deal of the earth is our portion by the appointment of nature, and yet see how we will not rest, but covet to conquer the whole world that is habitable.

You have seen (I suppose) the isle Naxos; if not, yet at leastwise the island Thuria near by; of which twain this was in old time the habitation of Orion; but in the other there dwelt Ephialtes and Otus: as for Alcmseon, he made his abode and residence upon the muddy bank, which the river Achelous had newly gathered and cast up, after it was a little dried and compact together, to avoid the pursuit (as the poets say) of the Furies; but in my conceit rather, because he would decline the offices of state, civil magistracies, seditious broils, and biting