To one who said "You're a Prometheus in words." (1-5)

So you say I am a Prometheus? If by this, my friend, you mean that my works like his are of clay, I accept the comparison and agree that I am like him. I don’t object to being called a clay-worker, even if my mud is rather dirty stuff from a road-junction, little better than filth. But if you are over-praising my words, implying that they are well wrought and graciously assigning the name of the wisest of the Titans to them, you may find that people will detect irony and an Attic sniff in your praise. In what way is my work well wrought? What superlative wisdom and Promethean foresight is there in my writings? I am quite content if you thought them not too earthy, not quite worthy of the Caucasus. Yet how much more just would it be to compare to Prometheus all you people who win fame by fighting real battles in the courts! What you do is truly alive and breathing and, yes, its heat is that of fire. [*] This too is from Prometheus with the sole difference that what you fashion is not clay but in many cases your fictions are golden.

We however who come before a crowd and offer our lectures, such as they are, show you a few figurines, and our modelling is entirely in mud as I said just now, like that of doll-makers. In general there is no movement in them that corresponds to life nor any indication of breathing. No, the whole business is empty enjoyment and play. So it’s occurring to me to wonder whether you are calling me Prometheus as the comic poet called Cleon Prometheus. He says of him, you remember,

“Cleon’s a Prometheus after the event.” [*]

Yet someone might console me by saying “It was not in these respects that he compared you to Prometheus. No, he was praising your originality in following no exemplar, just as Prometheus at a time when no men existed fashioned them from his imagination, when he gave shape and form to such living creatures that they might move easily and be graceful to see. He was the master-craftsman, though Athena helped by breathing into the mud and

Take an example. Ptolemy the son of Lagus brought two novelties to Egypt—a completely black Bactrian camel and a man of two colours, half jet-black and half dazzlingly white, the colours equally divided. He assembled the Egyptians in the theatre, where he put on a lot of other shows for them and lastly this, the black camel and the half-white man, thinking to amaze them by the spectacle. The spectators however took fright at the camel and all but jumped up and ran away—and that though the camel was adorned all over with gold and draped in sea-purple and the bridle was set with gems, the treasure of some Darius or Cambyses or Cyrus himself. As for the man, most of them laughed, but some were disgusted as at a monstrosity. So when Ptolemy realised that he got no credit in their eyes and the Egyptians did not admire the novelty but

I am afraid that my work too is a camel in Egypt and people admire its bridle and its sea-purple, since even the combination of those two very fine creations, dialogue and comedy, is not enough for beauty of form if the blending lacks harmony and symmetry. The synthesis of two fine things can be a freak—the hippocentaur is an obvious example: you would not call this creature charming, rather a monstrosity, to go by the paintings of their drunken orgies and murders. Well then, can nothing beautiful come from the synthesis of two things of high quality, as the mixture of wine and honey is exceedingly pleasant? Yes, certainly. But I cannot maintain that this is the case with my two: I’m afraid that the beauty of each has been lost in the blending.