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.

 

But if you reject such men as these, and
brilliant achievements and ennobling words and
a seemly guise, and honor and glory and fame
and distinction, and political power and office,
and respect as an orator and envy as a wit, you
will wear a dirty shirt and take on the look of a
slave; your hands will be full of crowbars and
gravers and chisels and picks; you will stoop
over your work, grovelling, prostrate, and altogether stunted; you will never look up or fix
your thoughts on any manly, liberal theme; and
you will ponder how to make your works symmetrical and well-shaped, but for your own symmetry and shapeliness you will take no care at all,
making yourself of less worth than your stones."

 

While she was still speaking thus, and without
waiting to hear her to the end, I seemed to spring
up and leave the ugly woman in laborer's guise,
and cross over to Culture right joyfully, particularly since that stick came into my head, and how
the other had caused me a beating only yesterday
on my first acquaintance with her. When she
was deserted she at first went into a passion,
smiting her hands together and grinding her
teeth; but finally she grew rigid and turned to
stone, as we hear Niobe did. Now even if this
experience of her's seems extraordinary, do not
disbelieve it, for dreams work wonders.


 

 
The other woman looked at me and said, "Now
I will repay you for the justice of your judgment.
Come forthwith and mount this car "-pointing to
a car drawn by winged horses resembling Pegasus
-"so that you may see what you would have
missed knowing if you had not followed me."
Thereupon I mounted the car, and she drove;
and borne aloft I beheld, from the east to the
west, cities and nations and peoples, and I sowed
something upon the earth like Triptolemos.


However, what it was that I sowed I do not now remember, but only this, that the people looked up
at me from beneath and praised me, and sped me
on my way wherever I passed in my flight.