She made fun of all such people as these, who
surrender themselves to flatterers, and she added,
too, that many wish to be similarly flattered and
cozened in portraits as well as in complimentary
speeches. “In fact,” said she, “they delight most
of all in those painters who make the prettiest
pictures of them. And there are some who even
direct the artists to take away a little of the nose,
or paint the eyes blacker, or give them any other
characteristic that they covet; and then, in their
blissful ignorance, they hang wreaths of flowers
upon portraits of other people, not in the least like
themselves!”
 
That is about what she had to say; she commended most of the piece, but could not put up
with one feature of it, that you compared her to
goddesses, to Hera and Aphrodite. ‘Such praise,”
she said, “is too high for me; indeed, too high for
human kind. For my part I did not want you to
compare me even to those great ladies, Penelope
and Arete and Theano, let alone the noblest of the
goddesses. Besides, I am very superstitious and

 

timorous in all that concerns the gods. Consequently, I am afraid I may be thought to resemble
Cassiopeia The boastful mother of Andromeda, who would have had to surrender her daughter to the sea-monster except fur the timely intervention of Perseus. if I accept such praise as yours; and yet
she, as a matter of fact, compared herself only to
the Nereids and was duly reverential toward Hera
and Aphrodite.”
 
In view of this, Lycinus, she said that you must
rewrite everything of that sort, or else for her part
she calls the goddesses to witness that you wrote it
without her consent, and says you know that the
book will annoy her if it circulates in the form in
which you have now couched it, which is not at all
reverential or pious in its allusions to the gods.
She thought, too, that it would be considered a
sacrilege and a sin on her own part if she should
allow herself to be said to resemble Cnidian Aphrodite, and Our Lady in the Gardens. Moreover, she
wanted to remind you of the remark that you made
about her at the end of the book. You said that
she was modest and free from vanity; and that she
did not try to soar higher than a human being should,
but made her flight close to the earth. Yet the man
who said that sets the woman above the very stars,
even to the point of likening her to goddesses!
 
She did not want you to think her less intelligent
than Alexander. In his case, when the masterbuilder undertook to remodel the whole of Athos
and shape it into his likeness, so that the entire
mountain would become the image of the king,
holding a city in either hand, Alexander would not
agree to the monstrous proposal. Thinking the
project over-bold for him, he stopped the man from
modelling colossi on a scale that transcended convincingness, bidding him to let Athos alone and not


 

to diminish so great a mountain to similarity with a
tiny body. She praised Alexander for his greatness
of soul, and observed that thereby he had erected a
monument greater than Athos itself in the minds of
those who should think of him ever and anon in
time to come: for it took no little determination
to contemn so marvellous an honour. The same story is in How to Write History, c. 12, where also the name of the architect is not mentioned. Plutarch says it was Stasicrates (Alea. 72; Moral. 335). In Strabo 14, p. 641, Cheirocrates seems to underlie the various readings. Vitruvius (ii, praef.) tells the tale quite differently and makes Dinocrates the hero of it. 
 
So it was with her, said she; while she commended your skill in modelling and the idea of the
portraits, she did not recognize the likeness. She
was not worthy of such compliments, not by a great
deal, nor was any other mere woman. Therefore she
absolves you from honouring her thus, and pays her
homage to your patterns and models. You may
praise her in the ordinary, human way, but do not
let the sandal be too large for her foot; “it might
hamper me,” she said, “when I walk about in it.”