Lucian, Pro imaginibus, ed. Austin Morris Harmon, 24

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Λυκῖνος

εἰ δὲ καὶ ὅτι μάλιστά σε αὐταῖς ἐκείναις εἴκασα, οὐκ ἐμὸν τοῦτο, οὐδὲ ἐγὼ πρῶτος ταύτην ἐτεμόμην τὴν ὁδόν, ἀλλὰ πολλοὶ καὶ ἀγαθοὶ ποιηταί, καὶ μάλιστα ὁ πολίτης ὁ σὸς Ὅμηρος, ὃν καὶ νῦν ἀναβιβάσομαι συναγορεύσοντά μοι, ἢ οὐδεμία μηχανὴ μὴ οὐχὶ καὶ αὐτὸν σὺν ἐμοὶ ἁλῶναι.

ἐρήσομαι τοίνυν αὐτόν, μᾶλλον δὲ σὲ ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ — καὶ γὰρ διαμνημονεύεις εὖ ποιοῦσα τὰ χαριέστατα τῶν ἐρραψῳδημένων αὐτῷ — τί σοι ἐκεῖνος¹ δοκεῖ, ὁπόταν περὶ τῆς αἰχμαλώτου λέγῃ τῆς Βρισηΐδος ὅτι χρυσῇ Ἀφροδίτῃ ἰκέλη ἐπένθει τὸν Πάτροκλον; εἶτα μετὰ μικρόν, ὡς οὐχ ἱκανὸν εἰ μόνῃ τῇ Ἀφροδίτῃ ἐοικυῖα ἔσται,
εἶπε δʼ ἄρα — φησίν — κλαίουσα γυνὴ εἰκυῖα θεῇσιν.

ὁπόταν οὖν τὰ τοιαῦτα λέγῃ, μισεῖς κἀκεῖνον καὶ ἀπορρίπτεις τὸ βιβλίον, ἢ δίδως αὐτῷ ἐλευθεριάζειν ἐν τῷ ἐπαίνῳ; ἀλλὰ κἂν σὺ μὴ δῷς, ὅ γε τοσοῦτος αἰὼν δέδωκεν, οὐδʼ ἔστιν ὅστις αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τούτῳ ᾐτιάσατο, οὐδὲ ὁ μαστίξαι τολμήσας αὐτοῦ τὴν εἰκόνα οὐδʼ ὁ τὰ νόθα ἐπισημηνάμενος τῶν ἐπῶν ἐν τῇ παραγραφῇ τῶν ὀβελῶν.

εἶτα ἐκείνῳ μὲν ἐφεθήσεται βάρβαρον γυναῖκα, καὶ ταῦτα κλαίουσαν, τῇ χρυσῇ Ἀφροδίτῃ εἰκάσαι, ἐγὼ δʼ, ἵνα μὴ τὸ κάλλος εἴπω, διότι μὴ ἀνέχῃ ἀκούουσα, οὐκ ἂν παραβάλλοιμι θεῶν εἰκόσι γυναῖκα φαιδρὰν καὶ μειδιῶσαν τὰ πολλά, ὅπερ θεοῖς ὅμοιον ἄνθρωποι ἔχουσιν;

Pro imaginibus. Lucian. ed. Austin Morris Harmon. Medford, MA. Perseus 4.0.

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Funding provided by The National Endowment for the Humanities; Harvard Library Arcadia Fund; Google Digital Humanities Awards Program.

Current edition Perseus

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

Translations (2)

Essays in Portraiture Defended Perseus (Lucian, Vol. 4. Harmon, Austin Morris, editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925 (printing).) — 24 focus

[24] But if I had actually compared you, as much as you will, with the very goddesses themselves, I should not have been doing it on my own responsibility and should not have been the first to open this road. No, there have been many good poets ahead of me, and above all your fellow-citizen Homer, whom I shall now call up to plead for me, or else there is nothing for it but that he himself will be convicted along with me!

I shall therefore ask him, or, better, ask you in his stead, since you know by heart—and it is greatly to your credit—all the prettiest of the verses that he composed, what you think of him when he says of Briseis, the captive, that as she mourned for Patroclus she resembled golden Aphrodite?¹ Then after a bit, as if it were not enough that she should be like Aphrodite only, he says:

Then made answer, in tears, the maid as fair as a goddess.

Iiad19, 286 When he says that sort of thing, do you loathe him and fling away the book, or do you permit him to enjoy full freedom in his praise? Well, even if you refuse permission, at all events Time in his long flight has given it, and nobody has found fault with Homer on that score, neither the man who made bold to flog his statue nor the man who marked the spurious lines by setting daggers beside them.²

Then if he is to be permitted to compare a foreign woman, and in tears at that, with golden Aphrodite, for my part, not to speak of your beauty because you will not listen, may not I compare with images of the gods a radiant woman, usually smiling, a trait which men have in common with the gods?

Defence of the ‘portrait-study’ Perseus (The Works of Lucian of Samosata, Vol. 3. Fowler, Henry Watson and Fowler, Francis George, translators. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905.) — 24 focus

[24] But granting even that it had been the actual Goddesses to whom I likened you, it would be no new track, of which I had been the pioneer; it had been trodden before by many a great poet, most of all by your fellow citizen Homer, who will kindly now come and share my defence, on pain of sharing my sentence. I will ask him, then—or rather you for him; for it is one of your merits to have all his finest passages by heart—what think you, then, of his saying about the captive Briseis that in her mourning for Patroclus she was ‘Golden Aphrodite’s peer’?? A little further on, Aphrodite alone not meeting the case, it is:

So spake that weeping dame, a match for Goddesses.

When he talks like that, do you take offence and fling the book away, or has de your licence to expatiate in panegyric? Whether he has yours or not, he has that of all these centuries, wherein not a critic has found fault with him for it, not he that dared to scourge his statue¹, not he whose marginal pen² bastarded so many of his verses. Now, shall he have leave to match with Golden Aphrodite a barbarian woman, and her in tears, while I, lest I should describe the beauty that you like not to hear of, am forbidden to compare certain images to a lady who is ever bright and smiling—that beauty which mortals share with Gods?

Notes on the current edition

Ὑπὲρ τῶν Εἰκόνων

1. ἐκεῖνος Fritzsche: ἐκεῖνο MSS.

Lucian Pro imaginibus 24

ed. Austin Morris Harmon

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