The Anatomy of Melancholy

Many worthy men have been imprisoned all their lives, and it has brought them great honour and glory, and much public benefit through their excellent reflections. Ptolemy, king of Egypt, “when his strength was weakened and he suffered from ill health, was seized with a remarkable eagerness to learn, and so on.” Stricken with such bodily weakness that he could not go out, he became Strato’s pupil, devoted himself to his books and gave himself wholly to contemplation. As a result, my author adds, he built “a most splendid monument to royal wealth”: to his great honour, that renowned library at Alexandria containing forty thousand volumes.

Severinus Boethius never wrote so elegantly as in prison, nor Paul so devoutly, for most of his letters were dictated in chains. Joseph, says Augustine, gained more honour in prison than when he distributed grain and ruled Pharaoh’s household. Prison brings many a dissolute, riotous fellow to his senses; it settles many wandering rogues who would otherwise have raged like tigers, ruining themselves and others.

Banishment is no hardship at all. “Every land is a homeland to the brave,” and so on; and “one’s homeland is wherever one fares well.” A person’s country is where he lives at ease. Many travel for pleasure, says Seneca, to the very city to which you are banished; and how large a share of its citizens are strangers born elsewhere? “A homeland to its inhabitants”: it is the country of those born there, and they would think themselves banished if they had to go to the place you are leaving so reluctantly.

It is no disgrace to be a stranger, nor so burdensome to be an exile. Rain is a stranger to the earth, rivers to the sea, Jupiter in Egypt, and the sun to us all. The soul is an alien in the body, a nightingale in the air, a swallow in a house, Ganymede in heaven, an elephant at Rome, a phoenix in India. The things that are most unfamiliar and come from farthest away usually please us best.

The ancient Hebrews counted the whole world as Gentiles; the Greeks considered everyone but themselves barbarians. Our modern Italians disparage us as dull people from beyond the Alps: they scorn you and the country you admire so much. It is a childish whim to pine for home, to resent what others seek; to prefer, as lowly Icelanders and Norwegians do, their own rugged island to Italy or Greece, the gardens of the world.

There is a lowly nation in the north, says Pliny, called the Chauci. They live among rocks and sands by the sea, eat fish and drink water; yet these lowly people consider themselves slaves by comparison when they come to Rome. “So indeed it is,” he concludes: “Fortune spares many only to punish them.” So it is: Fortune favours some by letting them live at home, to their greater punishment. It is a failure of judgement.

All places are equally distant from heaven; the sun may shine as warmly in one city as in another; to a wise man climates make no difference. Whoever conducts himself well finds friends everywhere, and a prophet is not honoured in his own country.