overhaul your work, and by removing these blemishes avoid the
offence. They shocked and made her nervous as I read; she kept on
addressing the Goddesses in propitiatory words; and such feelings
may surely be permitted to her sex. For that matter, to be quite
frank, I shared them to some extent. At the first hearing I found
no offence; but as soon as she put her finger on the fault, I began
to agree. You know what happens with visible objects; if we look at
them at close quarters, just under our eyes, I mean, we distinguish
nothing clearly; but stepping back to the right distance, we get a
clear conception of what is right and what is wrong about them.
That was my experience here.
After all, to compare a mortal to Hera and Aphrodite is cheapening
the Goddesses, and nothing else. In such comparisons the small is
not so much magnified as the great is diminished and reduced. If a
giant and a dwarf were walking together, and their heights had to
be equalized, no efforts of the dwarf could effect it, however much
he stood on tiptoe; the giant must stoop and make himself out
shorter than he is. So in this sort of portraiture: the human is
not so much exalted by the similitude as the divine is belittled
and pulled down. If indeed a lack of earthly beauties forced the
artist upon scaling Heaven, he might perhaps be acquitted of
blasphemy; but your enterprise was so needless; why Aphrodite and
Hera, when you have all mortal beauty to choose from?
Prune and chasten, then, Lycinus. All this is not quite like you,
who never used to be over-ready with your commendation; you seem to
have gone now to the opposite extreme of prodigality, and developed
from a niggard into a spendthrift of praise. Do not be ashamed to
make alterations in what you have already published, either. They
say Phidias did as much after finishing his Olympian Zeus. He stood
behind the doors when he had opened them for the first time to let
the work be seen, and listened to the comments favourable or the
reverse. One found the nose too broad, another the face too long,
and so on. When the company was gone, he shut himself up again to
correct and adapt his statue to the prevailing taste. Advice so
many-headed was not to be despised; the many must after all see
further than the one, though that one be Phidias. There is the
counsel of a friend and well-wisher to back up the lady’s message.
_Ly_. Why, Polystratus, I never knew what an orator you were.
After that eloquent close-packed indictment of my booklet, I almost
despair of the defence. You and she were not quite judicial,
though; you less than she, in condemning the accused when its
counsel was not in court. It is always easy to win a walk-over,
you know; so no wonder we were convicted, not being allowed to
speak or given the ear of the court. But, still more monstrous, you
were accusers and jury at once. Well, what am I to do? accept the
verdict and hold my tongue? pen a palinode like Stesichorus? or
will you grant an appeal?
_Poly_. Surely, if you have anything to say for yourself. For
you will be heard not by opponents, as you say, but by friends.
Indeed, my place is with you in the dock.
_Ly_. How I wish I could, have spoken in her own presence!
that would have been far better; but I must do it by proxy.
However, if you will report me to her as well as you did her to me,
I will adventure.
_Poly_. Trust me to do justice to the defence; but put it
shortly, in mercy to my memory.
_Ly_. So severe an indictment should by rights be met at
length; but for your sake I will cut it short. Put these
considerations before her from me, then.
_Poly_. No, not that way, please. Make your speech, just as
though she were listening, and I will reproduce you to her.
_Ly_. Very well, then. She is here; she has just delivered the
oration which you have described to me; it is now counsel’s turn.
And yet—I must confide my feelings to you—you have made my
undertaking somehow more formidable; you see the beads gather on my
brow; my courage goes; I seem to see her there; my situation
bewilders me. Yet begin I will; how can I draw back when she is
there?
_Poly_. Ah, but her face promises a kindly hearing; see how
bright and gracious. Pluck up heart, man, and begin.
_Ly_. Most noble lady, in what you term the great and excessive
praise that I bestowed upon you, I find no such high testimony to
your merits as that which you have borne yourself by your surprise
at the attribution of divinity. That one thing surpasses all that I
have said of you, and my only excuse for not having added this
trait to my portrait is that I was not aware of it; if I had been,
no other should have had precedence of it. In this light I find
myself, far from exaggerating, to have fallen much short of the
truth. Consider the magnitude of this omission, the convincing
demonstration of a sterling character and a right disposition which
I lost; for those will be the best in human relations who are most
earnest in their dealings with the divine. Why, were it decided
that I must correct my words and retouch my statue, I should do it
not by presuming to take away from it, but by adding this as its
crowning grace. But from another point of view I have a great debt
of gratitude to acknowledge. I commend your natural modesty, and
your freedom from that vanity and pride which so exalted a position
as yours might excuse. The best witness to my correctness is just
the exception that you have taken to my words. That instead of
receiving the praise I offered as your right you should be
disturbed at it and call it excessive, is the proof of your
unassuming modesty. Nevertheless, the more you reveal that this is
your view of praise, the stronger proof you give of your own
worthiness to be praised. You are an exact illustration of what
Diogenes said when some one asked him how he might become famous:—
‘by despising fame.’ So if I were asked who most deserve praise, I
should answer, Those who refuse it.
But I am perhaps straying from the point. What I have to defend is
the having likened you, in giving your outward form, to the Cnidian
and the Garden _Aphrodite_, to _Hera_ and _Athene_; such
comparisons you find out of all proportion. I will deal directly
with them, then. It has indeed been said long ago that poets and
painters are irresponsible; that is still more true, I conceive, of
panegyrists, even humble prose ones like myself who are not run
away with by their metre. Panegyric is a chartered thing, with no
standard quantitative measure to which it must conform; its one and
only aim is to express deep admiration and set its object in the
most enviable light. However, I do not intend to take that line of
defence; you might think I did so because I had no other open.
But I have. I refer you to the proper formula of panegyric, which
requires the author to introduce illustrations, and depends mainly
on their goodness for success. Now this goodness is shown not when
the illustration is just like the thing illustrated, nor yet when
it is inferior, but when it is as high above it as may be. If in
praising a dog one should remark that it was bigger than a fox or a
cat, would you regard him as a skilful panegyrist? certainly not.
Or if he calls it the equal of a wolf, he has not made very much of
it so either. Where is the right thing to be found? why, in
likening the dog’s size and spirit to the lion’s. So the poet who
would praise Orion’s dog called it the lion-queller. There you have
the perfect panegyric of the dog. Or take Milo of Croton, Glaucus
of Carystus, or Polydamas; to say of them by way of panegyric that
each of them was stronger than a woman would be to make oneself a
laughing-stock; one man instead of the woman would not much mend
matters. But what, pray, does a famous poet make of Glaucus?—
To match those hands not e’en the might
Of Pollux’ self had dared;
Alcmena’s son, that iron wight,
Had shrunk—
See what Gods he equals him to, or rather what Gods he puts him
above. And Glaucus took no exception to being praised at the
expense of his art’s patron deities; nor yet did they send any
judgement on athlete or poet for irreverence; both continued to be
honoured in Greece, one for his might, and the other for this even
more than for his other odes. Do not be surprised, then, that when
I wished to conform to the canons of my art and find an
illustration, I took an exalted one, as reason was that I should.
You used the word flattery. To dislike those who practise it is
only what you should do, and I honour you for it. But I would have
you distinguish between panegyric proper and the flatterer’s
exaggeration of it. The flatterer praises for selfish ends,
cares little for truth, and makes it his business to magnify
indiscriminately; most of his effects consist in lying additions of
his own; he thinks nothing of making Thersites handsomer than
Achilles, or telling Nestor he is younger than any of the host; he
will swear Croesus’s son hears better than Melampus, and give
Phineus better sight than Lynceus, if he sees his way to a profit
on the lie. But the panegyrist pure and simple, instead of lying
outright, or inventing a quality that does not exist, takes the
virtues his subject really does possess, though possibly not in
large measure, and makes the most of them. The horse is really
distinguished among the animals we know for light-footed speed;
well, in praising a horse, he will hazard:
The corn-stalks brake not ‘neath his airy tread.
He will not be frightened of ‘whirlwind-footed steeds.’ If his
theme is a noble house, with everything handsome about it,
Zeus on Olympus dwells in such a home,
we shall be told. But your flatterer would use that line about the
swineherd’s hovel, if he saw a chance of getting anything out of
the swineherd. Demetrius Poliorcetes had a flatterer called
Cynaethus who, when he was gravelled for lack of matter, found some
in a cough that troubled his patron—he cleared his throat so
musically!
There you have one criterion: flatterers do not draw the line at a
lie if it will please their patrons; panegyrists aim merely at
bringing into relief what really exists. But there is another great
difference: the flatterers exaggerate as much as ever they can; the
panegyrists in the midst of exaggeration observe the limitations of
decency. And now that you have one or two of the many tests for
flattery and panegyric proper, I hope you will not treat all praise
as suspect, but make distinctions and assign each specimen to its
true class.
By your leave I will proceed to apply the two definitions to what I
wrote; which of them fits it? If it had been an ugly woman that I
likened to the Cnidian statue, I should deserve to be thought a
toady, further gone in flattery than Cynaethus. But as it was one
for whose charms I can call all men to witness, my shot was not so
far out.
Now you will perhaps say—nay, you have said already—Praise my
beauty, if you will; but the praise should not have been of that
invidious kind which compares a woman to Goddesses. Well, I will
keep truth at arm’s length no longer; I did _not_, dear lady,
compare you to Goddesses, but to the handiwork in marble and bronze
and ivory of certain good artists. There is no impiety, surely, in
illustrating mortal beauty by the work of mortal hands—unless you
take the thing that Phidias fashioned to be indeed Athene, or
Praxiteles’s not much later work at Cnidus to be the heavenly
Aphrodite. But would that be quite a worthy conception of divine
beings? I take the real presentment of them to be beyond the reach
of human imitation.
But granting even that it had been the actual Goddesses to whom I
likened you, it would be no new track, of which I had been the
pioneer; it had been trodden before by many a great poet, most of
all by your fellow citizen Homer, who will kindly now come and
share my defence, on pain of sharing my sentence. I will ask him,
then—or rather you for him; for it is one of your merits to have
all his finest passages by heart—what think you, then, of his
saying about the captive Briseis that in her mourning for Patroclus
she was ‘Golden Aphrodite’s peer’? A little further on, Aphrodite
alone not meeting the case, it is:
So spake that weeping dame, a match for Goddesses.
When he talks like that, do you take offence and fling the book
away, or has _he_ your licence to expatiate in panegyric?
Whether he has yours or not, he has that of all these centuries,
wherein not a critic has found fault with him for it, not he
that dared to scourge his statue [Footnote: Zoilus, called
Homeromastix.], not he whose marginal pen [Footnote: Aristarclius.]
bastarded so many of his verses. Now, shall he have leave to match
with Golden Aphrodite a barbarian woman, and her in tears, while I,
lest I should describe the beauty that you like not to hear of, am
forbidden to compare certain images to a lady who is ever bright
and smiling—that beauty which mortals share with Gods?
When he had Agamemnon in hand, he was most chary of divine
similitudes, to be sure! what economy and moderation in his use of
them! Let us see—eyes and head from Zeus, belt from Ares, chest
from Posidon; why, he deals the man out piecemeal among the host of
Heaven. Elsewhere, Agamemnon is ‘like baleful Ares’; others have
their heavenly models; Priam’s son (a Phrygian, mark) is ‘of form
divine,’ the son of Peleus is again and again ‘a match for Gods.’
But let us come back to the feminine instances You remember, of
course,
—a match
For Artemis or golden Aphrodite;
and
Like Artemis adown the mountain slope.
But he does not even limit himself to comparing the whole man to a
God; Euphorbus’s mere hair is called like the Graces—when it is
dabbled with blood, too. In fact the practice is so universal that
no branch of poetry can do without its ornaments from Heaven.
Either let all these be blotted, or let me have the same licence.
Moreover, illustration is so irresponsible that Homer allows
himself to convey his compliments to Goddesses by using creatures
inferior to them. Hera is ox-eyed. Another poet colours Aphrodite’s
eyes from the violet. As for fingers like the rose, it takes but
little of Homer’s society to bring us acquainted with them.
Still, so far we do not get beyond mere looks; a man is only called
_like_ a God. But think of the wholesale adaptation of their
names, by Dionysiuses, Hephaestions, Zenos, Posidoniuses,
Hermaeuses. Leto, wife of Evagoras, King of Cyprus, even dispensed
with adaptation; but her divine namesake, who could have turned her
into stone like Niobe, took no offence. What need to mention that
the most religious race on earth, the Egyptian, never tires of
divine names? most of those it uses hail from Heaven.
Consequently, there is not the smallest occasion for you to be
nervous about the panegyric. If what I wrote contains anything
offensive to the deity, you are not responsible, unless you
consider we are responsible for all that goes in at our ears; no, I
shall pay the penalty—as soon as the Gods have settled with Homer
and the other poets. Ah, and they have not done so yet with the
best of all philosophers [Footnote: Lucian’s ‘best of all
philosophers’ might be Plato, who is their spokesman in ‘The
Fisher’ (see Sections 14, 22), or Epicurus, in the light of two
passages in the ‘Alexander’ (Sections 47, 61) in which he almost
declares himself an Epicurean. The exact words are not found in
Plato, though several similar expressions are quoted; words of
Epicurus appear to be translated in Cicero, _De nat. Deorum_,
Book I, xviii s. f., hominis esse specie deos confitendum est: we
must admit that the Gods are in the image of man.], for saying that
man is a likeness of God. But now, though I could say much more,
madam, I must have compassion upon Polystratus’s memory, and cease.
_Poly_. I am not so sure I am equal to it, Lycinus, as it is.
You have made it long, and exceeded your time limit. However, I
will do my best. See, I scurry off with my fingers in my ears, that
no alien sound may find its way in to disturb the arrangement; I do
not want to be hissed by my audience.
_Ly_. Well, the responsibility for a correct report lies with
you alone. And having now duly instructed you, I will retire for
the present. But when the verdict is brought into court, I will be
there to learn the result.
TOXARIS: A DIALOGUE OF FRIENDSHIP
_Mnesippus_. _Toxaris_
_Mne_. Now, Toxaris: do you mean to tell me that you people
actually _sacrifice_ to Orestes and Pylades? do you take them
for Gods?
_Tox_. Sacrifice to them? of course we do. It does not follow
that we think they are Gods: they were good men.
_Mne_. And in Scythia ‘good men’ receive sacrifice just the
same as Gods?
_Tox_. Not only that, but we honour them with feasts and
public gatherings.
_Mne_. But what do you expect from them? They are shades now,
so their goodwill can be no object.
_Tox_. Why, as to that, I think it may be just as well to have
a good understanding even with shades. But that is not all: in
honouring the dead we consider that we are also doing the best we
can for the living. Our idea is that by preserving the memory of
the noblest of mankind, we induce many people to follow their
example.
_Mne_. Ah, there you are right. But what could you find to
admire in Orestes and Pylades, that you should exalt them to
godhead? They were strangers to you: strangers, did I say? they
were enemies! Why, when they were shipwrecked on your coast, and
your ancestors laid hands on them, and took them off to be
sacrificed to Artemis, they assaulted the gaolers, overpowered the
garrison, slew the king, carried off the priestess, laid impious
hands on the Goddess herself, and so took ship, snapping their
fingers at Scythia and her laws. If you honour men for this kind of
thing, there will be plenty of people to follow their example, and
you will have your hands full. You may judge for yourselves, from
ancient precedent, whether it will suit you to have so many
Oresteses and Pyladeses putting into your ports. It seems to me
that it will soon end in your having no religion left at all: God
after God will be expatriated in the same manner, and then I
suppose you will supply their place by deifying their kidnappers,
thus rewarding sacrilege with sacrifice. If this is not your motive
in honouring Orestes and Pylades, I shall be glad to know what
other service they have rendered you, that you should change your
minds about them, and admit them to divine honours. Your ancestors
did their best to offer them up to Artemis: you offer up victims to
them. It seems an absurd inconsistency.
_Tox_. Now, in the first place, the incident you refer to is
very much to their credit. Think of those two entering on that vast
undertaking by themselves: sailing away from their country to the
distant Euxine [Footnote: See _Euxine_ in Notes.]—that sea
unknown in those days to the Greeks, or known only to the
Argonauts—unmoved by the stories they heard of it, undeterred by
the inhospitable name it then bore, which I suppose referred to the
savage nations that dwelt upon its shores; think of their
courageous bearing after they were captured; how escape alone would
not serve them, but they must avenge their wrong upon the king, and
carry Artemis away over the seas. Are not these admirable deeds,
and shall not the doers be counted as Gods by all who esteem
prowess? However, this is not our motive in giving them divine
honours.
_Mne_. Proceed. What else of godlike and sublime was in their
conduct? Because from the seafaring point of view, there are any
number of merchants whose divinity I will maintain against theirs:
the Phoenicians, in particular, have sailed to every port in Greek
and foreign waters, let alone the Euxine, the Maeotian Lake and the
Bosphorus; year after year they explore every coast, only returning
home at the approach of winter. Hucksters though they be for the
most part, and fishmongers, you must deify them all, to be
consistent.
_Tox_. Now, now, Mnesippus, listen to me, and you shall see
how much more candid we barbarians are in our valuation of good men
than you Greeks. In Argos and Mycenae there is not so much as a
respectable tomb raised to Orestes and Pylades: in Scythia, they
have their temple, which is very appropriately dedicated to the two
friends in common, their sacrifices, and every honour. The fact of
their being foreigners does not prevent us from recognizing their
virtues. We do not inquire into the nationality of noble souls: we
can hear without envy of the illustrious deeds of our enemies; we
do justice to their merits, and count them Scythians in deed if not
in name. What particularly excites our reverent admiration in the
present case is the unparalleled loyalty of the two friends; in
them we have a model from which every man may learn how he must
share good and evil fortune with his friends, if he would enjoy the
esteem of all good Scythians. The sufferings they endured with and
for one another our ancestors recorded on a brazen pillar in the
Oresteum; and they made it law, that the education of their
children should begin with committing to memory all that is
inscribed thereon. More easily shall a child forget his own
father’s name than be at fault in the achievements of Orestes and
Pylades. Again, in the temple corridor are pictures by the artists
of old, illustrating the story set forth on the pillar. Orestes is
first shown on shipboard, with his friend at his side. Next, the
ship has gone to pieces on the rocks; Orestes is captured and
bound; already Iphigenia prepares the two victims for sacrifice.
But on the opposite wall we see that Orestes has broken free;
he slays Thoas and many a Scythian; and the last scene shows
them sailing away, with Iphigenia and the Goddess; the Scythians
clutch vainly at the receding vessel; they cling to the rudder,
they strive to clamber on board; at last, utterly baffled,
they swim back to the shore, wounded or terrified. It is at this
point in their conflict with the Scythians that the devotion of the
friends is best illustrated: the painter makes each of them
disregard his own enemies, and ward off his friend’s assailants,
seeking to intercept the arrows before they can reach him, and
counting lightly of death, if he can save his friend, and receive in
his own person the wounds that are meant for the other. Such
devotion, such loyal and loving partnership in danger, such true and
steadfast affection, we held to be more than human; it indicated a
spirit not to be found in common men. While the gale is prosperous,
we all take it very much amiss if our friends will not share equally
with us: but let the wind shift ever so little, and we leave them to
weather the storm by themselves. I must tell you that in Scythia no
quality is more highly esteemed than this of friendship; there is
nothing on which a Scythian prides himself so much as on sharing the
toils and dangers of his friend; just as nothing is a greater
reproach among us than treachery to a friend. We honour Orestes and
Pylades, then, because they excelled in the Scythian virtue of
loyalty, which we place above all others; and it is for this that we
have bestowed on them the name of Coraci, which in our language
means spirits of friendship.
_Mne_. Ah, Toxaris, so archery is not the only accomplishment
of the Scythians, I find; they excel in rhetorical as well as in
military skill. You have persuaded me already that you were right in
deifying Orestes and Pylades, though I thought differently just now.
I had no conception, either, what a painter you were. Your
description of the pictures in the Oresteum was most vivid;—that
battle-scene, and the way in which the two intercepted one another’s
wounds. Only I should never have thought that the Scythians would
set such a high value on friendship: they are such a wild,
inhospitable race; I should have said they had more to do with anger
and hatred and enmity than with friendship, even for their nearest
relations, judging by what one is told; it is said, for instance,
that they devour their fathers’ corpses.