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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, heclaims, 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