This passage by English statesman and Renaissance humanist Thomas More (1478–1535) is excerpted from Book I of On the Best Form of a Commonwealth and on the New Island of Utopia, a Truly Precious Book No Less Profitable than Delightful by the Most Distinguished and Learned Gentleman Thomas More, Citizen and Undersheriff of the Illustrious City of London. More’s work was first published in Louvain, Belgium, in 1516. In the present passage from the first edition, More’s alter ego experiences a fictional encounter in Antwerp with a Portuguese sailor, Raphael Hythloday, who reportedly was left behind by Amerigo Vespucci’s fourth expedition to the eastern coast of present-day Brazil. Hythloday’s name, a composite of Greek terms that can be roughly translated to “peddler of nonsense,” reminds readers of the fictionalized nature of his account. In the imaginary narrative, instead of monsters and ghouls, Hythloday finds the wisely and sensibly governed nation of the Utopians. His description of the social and political customs of the island of Utopia challenges European institutions and allows More to introduce the Greek term “u-topia” (no-place), a land of perfection that is indeed nowhere to be found. This excerpt is translated from the Latin by Clarence H. Miller [Utopia. New Translation with an Introduction by Clarence H. Miller (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 10–15].
AS MY BUSINESS REQUIRED, I made my way to Antwerp. While I was staying there, I was often visited by Peter Giles,1 among others, though no other visitor was more delightful to me. . . .
One day, after I had heard mass at the church of St. Mary, which is remarkable for its beautiful architecture and its large congregation, when the service was over and I was getting ready to return to my lodgings, I happened to see Giles conversing with a stranger who was getting up in years. His face was sunburned, his beard untrimmed, his cloak hanging carelessly from his shoulder; from his face and bearing I thought he looked like a sea captain. But then, when Peter saw me, he came up and greeted me. When I tried to answer, he took me a little aside and said, “Do you see this man?” (At the same time he indicated the person I had seen him talking to.) “He is the one,” he said, “I was just getting ready to bring straight to you.”
“He would have been all the more welcome to me on your account.”
“Actually on his own,” he said, “if you knew him. For there is no mortal alive today who can give more information about unknown peoples and lands, and I know that you are very eager to hear about them.”
“My guess was not far off, then,” I said, “for when I first set eyes on him, I immediately thought he was a sea captain.”
“But in fact,” he said, “you were far off the mark. Certainly he has sailed, not like Palinurus, but rather like Ulysses, or even better like Plato.2 This man, who is named Raphael—his family name is Hythloday—has no mean knowledge of the Latin language but is especially proficient in Greek; he has devoted himself to Greek more than to Latin because he has totally committed himself to philosophy and he knew that in that field there is nothing of any importance in Latin except some works of Seneca and Cicero.3 Out of a desire to see the world he left to his brothers his heritage in his homeland (he is from Portugal),4 joined Amerigo Vespucci, and was his constant companion in the first three of the four voyages which everyone is now reading about; but on the last voyage he did not come back with him. He sought and practically wrested from Amerigo permission to be one of the twenty-four who were left behind in a fort at the farthest point of the last voyage.5 And so he was left behind in accordance with his outlook, since he was more concerned about his travels than his tomb. Indeed he often used to say, ‘Whoever does not have an urn has the sky to cover him,’ and ‘from everywhere it is the same distance to heaven.’ This attitude of his would have cost him dearly if God had not been merciful to him. However, after the departure of Vespucci, he traveled through many lands with five companions from the fort, and finally, by an extraordinary stroke of luck, he was transported to Ceylon and from there he reached Calicut,6 where he opportunely found some Portuguese ships and at last, beyond all expectation, he got home again.”
When Peter had told me this I thanked him for his kindness in taking so much trouble to introduce me to someone whose conversation he hoped I would enjoy, and then I turned to Raphael. After we had greeted each other and spoken the usual amenities that are exchanged when strangers meet for the first time, we went off to my house, where we conversed sitting in the garden on a bench covered with grassy turf.
And so he told us how, after the departure of Vespucci, he and his companions who had remained in the fort gradually began to win the good graces of the people of that land by encountering and speaking well of them, and then they started to interact with them not only with no danger but even on friendly terms, and finally they gained the affection and favor of some ruler, whose name and country escape me. He told how, through the generosity of the ruler, he and five of his companions were liberally supplied with provisions and ships on the sea and wagons on the land—together with a trustworthy guide who took them to other rulers to whom he heartily recommended them. After many days’ journey, he said, he discovered towns and cities and commonwealths that were very populous and not badly governed.
On both sides of the equator, it is true, extending almost as far as the space covered by the orbit of the sun there lie vast empty wastelands, scorched with perpetual heat.7 The whole region is barren and ugly, rugged and uncultivated, inhabited by wild beasts and serpents and by people who are no less wild than the beasts and no less dangerous. But when you have traveled further, everything gradually becomes milder. The heavens are less fierce, the ground is green and pleasant, the creatures are more gentle, and finally one sees peoples, cities, towns, which not only trade continually among themselves and with near neighbors but also carry on commerce with distant nations by land and seas. From that point on they were able to visit many countries in all directions since there was no ship traveling anywhere in which he and his comrades were not eagerly welcomed.
He told us that in the first regions they traveled they saw flat-bottomed vessels, spreading sails made of wickerwork or of stitched papyrus, and in other places of leather. But afterwards they found ships with curved keels, canvas sails, and in fact all the features of our own vessels. The sailors were not unskilled in seamanship and celestial navigation, but he told us that they were extremely grateful to him for introducing them to the magnetic compass, with which they had been totally unfamiliar. For that reason they usually were afraid to commit themselves to the open sea and they did not venture to do so except during the summer. But now they have such confidence in the compass that they scorn the winter weather and are careless rather than secure; thus there is a danger that the device which they thought would do them so much good will do them great harm because of their imprudence.
To present what he told us about the things he saw in each and every place would take a long time and would be beyond the scope of this work. And perhaps I will speak of it elsewhere, especially those points of which it would be useful not to be ignorant, above all whatever correct and prudent provisions he observed among civilized nations. We asked him very eagerly about such matters, and he was quite willing to explain them, but we paid no attention to monsters, for nothing is less novel than they are. Indeed, there is almost no place where you will not find Scyllas and rapacious Celænos and man-eating Læstrigonians and such prodigious monsters,8 but it is not everywhere that you will find soundly and wisely trained citizens. But just as he noted many ill-considered practices among those newly discovered nations, so too he recounted not a few features that could serve as patterns to correct the errors of our own cities, nations, peoples, and kingdoms. These, as I said, will have to be presented elsewhere. At present I intend to relate only what he told us about the customs and institutions of the Utopians,9 but first I will present the conversation that led him on, as it were, to mention that commonwealth. For after Raphael had very judiciously analyzed some of our errors and some of theirs (and certainly there are plenty in both places) and had presented some wiser provisions both here and there—and he had such a mastery of the customs and institutions of every nation he visited that you would imagine he had spent his whole life there—Peter was amazed by him and said, “My dear Raphael, why do you not enter into the service of some king, for I am convinced that there is none who would not be extremely glad to have you, because this learning of yours and your knowledge of peoples and places would not only serve to delight him but would also make you fit to inform him of precedents and aid him with advice. In this manner you could at one and the same time promote your own interests enormously and be of great assistance to your relatives and friends.”
“As for my relatives and friends, I am not much concerned about them because I have done my duty by them well enough: others do not give up their possessions until they are old and sick, and even then they do so reluctantly, when they can no longer retain them; but I divided my possessions up among my relatives and friends when I was not only healthy and vigorous but also young. I think they ought to be satisfied with my generosity, and beyond that they should not demand and expect me to hand myself over into servitude to kings for their sake.”
“A fine thing to say,” said Peter. “I want you to go into the service of kings, not be in servitude to them.”
“There is,” he said, “only one syllable’s difference between them.”
. . .
1
Giles (1486–1533) was learned in the law and edited classical and humanist books. Since 1512 he had been chief clerk of the court of justice at Antwerp.
2
Palinurus, Æneas’ steersman, dozed at the helm, fell overboard, and drowned (Æneid 5.833-61.), unlike the alert Odysseus and observant Plato, who learned much from their travels (Odyssey I.1–4; Diogenes Lærtius 3.6–7. 18–22).
3
More expressed the same opinion in his Letter to Oxford, in The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, vol. 15, ed. Daniel Kinney (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 143.
4
In 1515, the Portuguese excelled in exploration, especially in the Far East.
5
The voyages (1503–04) of the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1451–1512), who was in the employ of the King of Portugal, were described in the two Latin narratives (of disputed authenticity) published about 1507; one of the versions mentions he left twenty-four mariners behind in a fort at the farthest point of the voyage (Cape Frio in southeast Brazil), just across Rio de Janeiro.
6
The Portuguese had visited Calicut (a city on the west coast of India, not Calcutta) by 1487 and established a station there in 1511.
7
The torrid zone between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, the northern and southern limits between which the sun’s orbit was thought to move.
8
Scylla was the six-headed sea monster (Odyssey 12.73–100, 234–59; Æneid 3.424–58); Celæno was one of the harpies, disgusting birds with women’s faces (Æneid 3.209–58); the Læstrigonians were giant cannibals (Odyssey 10.17–133).
9
It seems likely that at this point More inserted the bulk of Book I, the dialog about counseling kings, which was written after Book 2, when More had returned to London. In this addition, More does not limit himself to describing Utopian institutions but gives Raphael’s narration about the Polylerites, Achorians, and Macarians. [—Ed.]