Essays in Portraiture Defended (19)

This, however, I do say; the conditions that govern us in these laudatory writings are such that the eulogist must employ comparisons and similes, and really the most important part of it is to make successful comparisons. And success would be most likely to be held attained, not if a man compares like to like, or if he makes his comparison with something that is inferior, but if he approximates, in so far as he may, what he is praising to something that surpasses it.

For example, if in praising a dog someone were to say that it was larger than a fox or a cat, does it seem to you that he knows how to praise? You will not say so! But even if he should say it was as large as a wolf, he has not praised it generously. Well, at what point will the special end of praise be achieved? When the dog is said to resemble a lion in size and in strength. So the poet who praised Orion’s dog[*] called him “lion-daunting.”’ That, of course, in the case of a dog is perfect praise.

Again, if someone who wished to praise Milo of Croton or Glaucus of Carystus or Polydamas[*] should say of any one of them that he was stronger than a woman, do not you suppose that he would be laughed at for the senselessness of his praise?

Indeed, if it had been said that he was better than any single man, that would not have sufficed for praise. Come, how did a famous poet? praise Glaucus when he said: “Not even mighty Polydeuces” could have held up his hands against that man, “nor yet the iron-hard son of Alemene!” You see what gods he likened him to—nay, actually avouched him better than those gods themselves! And it cannot be said either that Glaucus became indignant when he was praised in opposition to the gods who are the overseers of athletes, or that they punished either Glaucus or the poet as guilty of sacrilege in the matter of that praise. On the contrary, both enjoyed good fame and were honoured by the Greeks, Glaucus for his strength and the poet especially for this very song!

Do not wonder then, that I myself, desiring to make comparisons, as one who sought to praise was bound to do, used an exalted counterfoil, since my theme demanded it.