Lucian, Pro imaginibus, Henry Watson Fowler (Translator), Francis George Fowler (Translator), 28

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[28] Consequently, there is not the smallest occasion for you to be nervous about the panegyric. If what I wrote contains anything offensive to the deity, you are not responsible, unless you consider we are responsible for all that goes in at our ears; no, I shall pay the penalty—as soon as the Gods have settled with Homer and the other poets. Ah, and they have not done so yet with the best of all philosophers¹, for saying that man is a likeness of God. But now, though I could say much more, madam, I must have compassion upon Polystratus’s memory, and cease.

Pro imaginibus. Lucian. Henry Watson Fowler (Translator), Francis George Fowler (Translator). Medford, MA, USA. 2023-08-01.

Current edition Perseus

Defence of the ‘portrait-study’ (English) (The Works of Lucian of Samosata, Vol. 3. Fowler, Henry Watson and Fowler, Francis George, translators. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905.)

Editions (1)

Ὑπὲρ τῶν Εἰκόνων Perseus (Lucian, Vol. 4. Harmon, Austin Morris, editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925 (printing).) — 28 focus

Λυκῖνος

ὥστε οὐ πρός γε σοῦ τὸ τοιοῦτον, ψοφοδεῶς διακεῖσθαι πρὸς τὸν ἔπαινον· εἰ γάρ τι ἐν τῷ συγγράμματι πεπλημμέληται εἰς τὸ θεῖον, σὺ μὲν ἀνεύθυνος αὐτοῦ, ἐκτὸς εἰ μή τινα νομίζεις ἀκροάσεως εὔθυναν εἶναι, ἐμὲ δὲ ἀμυνοῦνται οἱ θεοί, ἐπειδὰν πρὸ ἐμοῦ τὸν Ὅμηρον καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ποιητὰς ἀμύνωνται. ἀλλʼ οὐδέπω οὐδὲ τὸν ἄριστον τῶν φιλοσόφων ἠμύναντο εἰκόνα θεοῦ τὸν ἄνθρωπον εἰπόντα εἶναι.

πολλὰ ἔτι ἔχων πρὸς σὲ εἰπεῖν Πολυστράτου ἕνεκα τούτου παύσομαι, ἵνα καὶ ἀπομνημονεῦσαι δυνηθῇ τὰ εἰρημένα.

Translations (1)

Essays in Portraiture Defended Perseus (Lucian, Vol. 4. Harmon, Austin Morris, editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925 (printing).) — 28 focus

[28] It is not incumbent upon you, then, to be thus timorous in respect of praise. If any offence at all has been perpetrated against divinity in that essay, you are not accountable for it—unless you think that to listen makes one accountable; it is I whom the gods will punish, after first punishing Homer and the other poets! But to this day they have not punished the best of the philosophers for saying that man was God’s image!¹

Notes on the current edition

Defence of the ‘portrait-study’

1. Lucian’s 'best of all philosophers’ might be Plato, who is their spokesman in ‘The Fisher’ (see §§ 14, 22), or Epicurus, in the light of two passages in the ‘Alexander’ (§§ 47, 61) in which he almost declares himself an Epicurean. The exact words are not found in Plato, though several similar expressions are quoted; words of Epicurus appear to be translated in Cicero, De nat. Deorum, Book I, xviii s.f., hominis esse specie deos confitendum est: we must admit that the Gods are in the image of man.

Lucian Pro imaginibus 28

Henry Watson Fowler (Translator), Francis George Fowler (Translator)

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