Knowledge is a resource that can swim with you out of a shipwreck

This is one of those instances when I discover something about a place I once lived in or travelled through but which I did not know of at the time.  In this case, I spent a week or so on the island of Rhodes in Greece back in the summer of 1981.  A delightful and educational experience those 42 years ago.  

This morning, reading a book about dynamic evolving systems in the context of ecology and the environment, I come across a reference to the Shipwreck of Aristippus.  Who he?  

As it turns out, Aristippus was a hedonistic Greek philosopher (435-356 BC) from the city of Cyrene, in modern day eastern Libya.  And his shipwreck?

In old age, Aristippus is said to have returned to Cyrene, living out his retirement in luxury and in the pursuit of pleasure till his death, at the age of 79.

In Book VI of De architectura, Vitruvius describes Aristippus:

It is related of the Socratic philosopher Aristippus that, being shipwrecked and cast ashore on the coast of the Rhodians, he observed geometrical figures drawn thereon, and cried out to his companions: "Let us be of good cheer, for I see the traces of man." With that he made for the city of Rhodes, and went straight to the gymnasium. There he fell to discussing philosophical subjects, and presents were bestowed upon him, so that he could not only fit himself out, but could also provide those who accompanied him with clothing and all other necessaries of life. When his companions wished to return to their country, and asked him what message he wished them to carry home, he bade them say this: that children ought to be provided with property and resources of a kind that could swim with them even out of a shipwreck.

The passage is a reminder of how cosmopolitan a world was the Golden Age of the Hellenes, when Greeks from all over the Mediterranean were not only heirs of a language and culture but were able to share and co-develop knowledge and ideas across space and time in a fashion that seems wondrous.  

You can only meet a person for the first time once, read a book the first time once, travel to a place for the first time once.  That experience is what it was.  But later gaining subsequent knowledge of that person, book, place, cannot change that experience.  But it can make you want to revisit the experience.  In this instance, it would be neat to see Rhodes again, knowing now that I would be trodding in the footsteps of the shipwrecked Aristippus.