Chapter XXXIV.—Ridicule of the Statues Erected by the Greeks.
Worthy of very great honour, certainly, was the
tyrant Bhalaris, who devoured sucklings, and accordingly is exhibited
by the workmanship of Polystratus the Ambraciot, even to this day,
as a very wonderful man! The Agrigentines dreaded to look on that
countenance of his, because of his cannibalism; but people of culture
now make it their boast that they behold him in his statue! Is it not
shameful that fratricide is honoured by you who look on the statues of
Polynices and Eteocles, and that you have not rather buried them with
their maker Pythagoras? Destroy these memorials of iniquity! Why should
I contemplate with admiration the figure of the woman who bore thirty
children, merely for the sake of the artist Periclymenus? One ought
to turn away with disgust from one who bore off the fruits of great
incontinence, and whom the Romans compared to a sow, which also on a
like account, they say, was deemed worthy of a mystic worship. Ares
committed adultery with Aphrodité, and Andron made an image of
their offspring Harmonia. Sophron, who committed to writing trifles
and absurdities, was more celebrated for his skill in casting metals,
of which specimens exist even now. And not only have his tales kept the
fabulist Æsop in everlasting remembrance, but also the plastic
art of Aristodemus has increased his celebrity. How is it then that
you, who have so many poetesses whose productions are mere trash, and
innumerable courtezans, and worthless men, are not ashamed to slander
the reputation of our women? What care I to know that Euanthé
gave birth to an infant in the Peripatus, or to gape with wonder
at the art of Callistratus, or to fix my gaze on the Neæra of
Calliades? For she was a courtezan. Laïs was a prostitute, and
Turnus made her a monument of prostitution. Why are you not ashamed of
the fornication of Hephæstion, even though Philo has represented him
very artistically? And for what reason do you honour the hermaphrodite
Ganymede by Leochares, as if you possessed something admirable? Praxiteles
even made a statue of a woman with the stain of impurity upon it. It
behoved you, repudiating everything of this kind, to seek what is truly
worthy of attention, and not to turn with disgust from our mode of life
while receiving with approval the shameful productions of Philænis
and Elephantis.
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