The Dream or Lucian’s Career (11-15)

“You who are now the beggarly son of a nobody, who have entertained some thought of so illiberal a trade, will after a little inspire envy and jealousy in all men, for you will be honoured and lauded, you will be held in great esteem for the highest qualities and admired by men_ preeminent in lineage and in wealth, you will wear clothing such as this”—she pointed to her own, and she was very splendidly dressed—“and will be deemed worthy of office and precedence. If ever you go abroad, even on foreign soil you will not be unknown or inconspicuous, for will attach to you such marks of identification that everyone who sees you will nudge his neighbour and point you out with his finger, saying, ‘There he is!’

If anything of grave import befalls your friends or even the entire city, all will turn their eyes upon you; and if at any time you chance to make a speech, the crowd will listen open-mouthed, marvelling and felicitating you upon your eloquence and your father upon his good fortune. They say that some men become immortal. I shall bring this to pass

“On the other hand, if you turn your back upon these men so great and noble, upon glorious deeds and sublime words, upon a dignified appearance, upon honour, esteem, praise, precedence, power and offices, upon fame for eloquence and felicitations for wit, then you will put on a filthy tunic, assume a servile appearance, and hold bars and gravers and sledges and chisels in your hands, with your back bent over your work; you will be a groundling, with groundling ambitions, altogether humble; you will never lift your head, or conceive a single manly or liberal thought, and although you will plan to make your works well-balanced and well-shapen, you will not show any concern to make yourself well-balanced and sightly; on the contrary, you will make yourself a thing of less value than a block of stone.”

While these words were still on her lips, without waiting for her to finish what she was saying, I stood up and declared myself. Abandoning the ugly

The other fixed her eyes upon me and said: “I will therefore repay you for the justice that you have done in judging this issue rightly: come at once and mount this car”—pointing to a car with winged horses resembling Pegasus—“in order that you may know what you would have missed if you had not come with me.” When I had mounted she plied whip and reins, and I was carried up into the heights and went from the East to the very West, surveying cities and nations and peoples, sowing something broadcast over the earth like Triptolemus. I do not now remember what it was that I sowed; only that men, looking up from below, applauded, and all those above whom I passed in my flight sped me on my way with words of praise.