Essays in Portraiture Defended (8)

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!