Essays in Portraiture (11-12)

POLYSTRATUS But, my friend, you caught sight of her just once, flying past like a flash, and naturally have praised only what was obvious—I mean, her person and her physical beauty. The good points of her soul you have not beheld, and you do not know how great that beauty is in her, far more notable and more divine than that of her body. I do, for I am acquainted with her, and have often conversed with her, being of the same nationality. As you yourself know, I commend gentleness, kindliness, high-mindedness, self-control, and culture rather than beauty, for these qualities deserve to be preferred over those of the body. To do otherwise would be illogical and ridiculous, as if one were to admire her clothing rather than her person. Perfect beauty, to my mind, is when there is a union of spiritual excellence and physical loveliness. In truth, I could point you out a great many women who are well endowed with good looks, but in every way discredit their beauty, so that if they merely speak it fades and withers, since it suffers by contrast and cuts a shabby figure, unworthily housing as it does with a soul that is but a sorry mistress. Such women seem to me like the temples of Egypt, where the temple itself is fair and great, built of costly stones and adorned with gold and with paintings, but if you seek out the god within, it is either a monkey or an ibis or a goat or a cat! Women of that sort are to be seen in plenty. ,

Beauty, then, is not enough unless it is set off with its just enhancements, by which I mean, not purple raiment and necklaces, but those I have already mentioned—virtue, self-control, goodness, kindliness, and everything else that is included in the definition of virtue.

LYCINUS Well then, Polystratus, trade me description for description, giving, as the saying goes, measure for measure, or even better than that, since you can. Do a likeness of her soul and display it to me, so ‘that I need not admire her by halves.

POLYSTRATUS It is no light task, my friend, that you are setting me; for it is not the same thing to laud what is manifest to all, and to reveal in words what is invisible. I think that I too shall need fellow-workmen for the portrait, philosophers as well as sculptors and painters, so that I can make my work of art conform to their canons and can exhibit it as modelled in the style of the ancients.