But if you will hearken to me, I will display
before you, to begin with, many works and wondrous doings of men of old, and I will report
their sayings to you and make you master, so to
speak, of all learning. I will adorn your soul,
which is the dominant power within you, with
many graces to wit, self-control, righteousness,
reverence, gentleness, equity, wisdom, strength,
love of beauty, taste for the worthiest pursuits.
For these are the things that really make the
spotless beauty of the soul. No sequence of
events in the past or present will escape you;
nay, by my help you will behold even the future,
and I will teach you erelong the nature of the
whole universe, the divine as well as the human.

 

You who are now poor, the son of a nobody,


 


meditating the adoption of such an ignoble craft,
shall be shortly felicitated and envied by the
world; you shall have honor and praise and glory
among the noblest; you shall be clad like this
-here she indicated her own garments, which
were splendid in the extreme-" and you shall
be deemed worthy of office and eminence. When
you go abroad you will not be unknown and obscure in a foreign land. I will set such marks
upon you that every one who sees you will nudge
his neighbor and point you out with his finger,
saying, 'That is he.'

 

"If any serious thing befall your friends, or
even the state at large, all will look to you.
When you chance to say anything the crowd will
listen open-mouthed and marvel at you, and envy
your gift and your father's good-fortune. And
this immortality which they say is sometimes bestowed on men I will store up for you. For even
when you yourself perish from the world you will
never cease from companionship with the cultured and conversation with the noblest. You
know whose son Demosthenes was, and yet I
made him the man he was. You know that
Aischines' mother was a dancer, and yet Philip
paid court to him for my sake. Sokrates himself
was brought up under the eye of this Art of Stonecutting, but you hear how his praises are sung on
all sides from the moment when he perceived the



 



better part and ran away from her and deserted
to me.