The Dream or Lucian’s Career (13-15)

“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.