Defence of the ‘portrait-study’ (16-20)

Lycinus How I wish I could have spoken in her own presence! that would have been far better; but I must do it by proxy.

Polystratus Trust me to do justice to the defence; but put it shortly, in mercy to my memory.

Lycinus So severe an indictment should by rights be met at length; but for your sake I will cut it short. Put these considerations before her from me, then.

Polystratus No, not that way, please. Make your speech, just as though she were listening, and I will reproduce you to her.

Lycinus Very well, then. She is here; she has just delivered the oration which you have described to me; it is now counsel’s turn. And yet—I must confide my feelings to you—you have made my undertaking somehow more formidable; you see the beads gather on my brow; my courage goes; I seem to see her there; my situation bewilders me. Yet begin I will; how can I draw back when she is there?

Polystratus Ah, but her face promises a kindly hearing; see how bright and gracious. Pluck up heart, man, and begin.

Lycinus Most noble lady, in what you term the great and excessive praise that I bestowed upon you, I find no such high testimony to your merits as that which you have borne yourself by your surprise at the attribution of divinity. That one thing surpasses all that I have said of you, and my only excuse for not having added this trait to my portrait is that I was not aware of it; if I had been, no other should have had precedence of it. In this light I find myself, far from exaggerating, to have fallen much short of the truth. Consider the magnitude of this omission, the convincing demonstration of a sterling character and a right disposition which I lost; for those will be the best in human relations who are most earnest in their dealings with the divine. Why, were it decided that I must correct my words and retouch my statue, I should do it not by presuming to take away from .t, but by adding this as its crowning grace.

But I am perhaps straying from the point. What I have to defend is the having likened you, in giving your outward form, to the Cnidian and the Garden Aphrodite, to Hera and Athene; such comparisons you find out of all proportion. I will deal directly with them, then. It has indeed been said long ago that poets and painters are irresponsible; that is still more true, I conceive, of panegyrists, even humble prose ones like myself who are not run away with by their metre. Panegyric is a chartered thing, with no standard quantitative measure to which it must conform; its one and only aim is to express deep admiration and set its object in the most enviable light. However, I do not intend to take that line of defence; you might - think I did so because I had no other open.