Essays in Portraiture (21-23)

POLYSTRATUS Not all of it! The very greatest items in her praise are still unincluded. I mean that in so elevated a station she has not clothed herself in pride over her success, and has not been uplifted above the limit that beseems humanity through confidence in Fortune, but keeps herself upon the common plane, with no tasteless or vulgar aspirations, treats her visitors familiarly and as an equal, and gives her friends greetings and evidences of affection that are all the sweeter to them because, although they come from one who is above them, they make no display of circumstance. Truly, all those who employ great power not in superciliousness but in kindness, are regarded as especially worthy of the blessings that have been bestowed upon them by Fortune, and they alone deserve to escape envy. Nobody will envy the man above him if he sees him behaving with moderation amid his successes and not, like Homer's Ate,[*] treading on the heads of

LYCINUS So be it, Polystratus. She deserves it, because it is not in body alone, like Helen, that she is fair, but the soul that she harbours therein is still more fair and lovely. It was in keeping, too, that our Emperor, kindly and gentle as he is, along with all the other blessings that he enjoys, should be so

POLYSTRATUS You are right, Lycinus. So, if you are willing, let us put our portraits together, the statue that you modelled of her body and the pictures that I painted of her soul; let us blend them all into one, put it down in a book, and give it to all mankind to admire, not only to those now alive, but to those that shall live hereafter. It would at least prove more enduring than the works of Apelles and Parrhasius and Polygnotus, and far more pleasing to the lady herself than anything of that kind, inasmuch as it is not made of wood and wax and colours but portrayed with inspirations from the Muses; and this will be found the most accurate kind of portrait, since it simultaneously discloses beauty of body and nobility of soul.