7
No one was ever known to be so forgetful of his country as to care nothing for it when he was in another state. No, those who get on badly in foreign parts continually cry out that one’s own country is the greatest of all blessings, while those who get on well, however successful they may be in all else, think that they lack one thing at least, a thing of the greatest importance, in that they do not live in their own country but sojourn in a strange land; for thus to sojourn is a reproach! And men who during their years abroad have, become illustrious through acquirement of wealth, through renown from office- holding, through testimony to their culture, or through praise of their bravery, can be seen hurrying one and all to their native land, as if they thought they could not anywhere else find better people before whom to display the evidences of their success. The more a man is esteemed elsewhere, the more eager is he to regain his own country.
8
Even the young love their native land; but aged men, being wiser, love it more. In fact, every aged man yearns and prays to end his life in it, that there in the place where he began to live he may
9
€posit his body in the earth which nurtured him: and may share the graves of his fathers. He thinks it a calamity to be guilty of being an alien even after death, through lying buried in a strange land.
