Essays in Portraiture Defended (7)

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[*] 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.”