Book 3
10.11
Then are not some human bodies well, others ill proportioned?Certainly.Then if a breastplate is to fit an ill-proportioned body, how do you make it well-proportioned?By making it fit; for if it is a good fit it is well-proportioned.
10.12
Apparently you mean well-proportioned not absolutely, but in relation to the wearer, as you might call a shield well-proportioned for the man whom it fits, or a military cape — and this seems to apply to everything according to you.
10.13
And perhaps there is another important advantage in a good fit.Tell it me, if you know, Socrates.The good fit is less heavy to wear than the misfit, though both are of the same weight. For the misfit, hanging entirely from the shoulders, or pressing on some other part of the body, proves uncomfortable and irksome; but the good fit, with its weight distributed over the collar-bone and shoulder-blades, the shoulders, chest, back and belly, may almost be called an accessory rather than an encumbrance.
10.14
The advantage you speak of is the very one which I think makes my work worth a big price. Some, however, prefer to buy the ornamented and the gold-plated breastplates.Still, if the consequence is that they buy misfits, it seems to me they buy ornamented and gold-plated trash.
10.15
However, as the body is not rigid, but now bent, now straight, how can tight breastplates fit? They can’t.You mean that the good fits are not the tight ones, but those that don’t chafe the wearer?That is your own meaning, Socrates, and you have hit the right nail on the head.
11.1
At one time there was in Athens a beautiful woman named Theodoté, who was ready to keep company with anyone who pleased her. One of the bystanders mentioned her name, declaring that words failed him to describe the lady’s beauty, and adding that artists visited her to paint her portrait, and she showed them as much as decency allowed. We had better go and see her, cried Socrates; of course what beggars description can’t very well be learned by hearsay.
