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POLYSTRATUS It is no light task, my friend, that you are setting me; for it is not the same thing to laud what is manifest to all, and to reveal in words what is invisible. I think that I too shall need fellow-workmen for the portrait, philosophers as well as sculptors and painters, so that I can make my work of art conform to their canons and can exhibit it as modelled in the style of the ancients.
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Come now, imagine it made. It will be “gifted with speech,”Like Circe (Odyssey10, 136). first of all, and “clear-voiced”;Like the Muse (Odyssey 24, 62). and Homer’s phrase “sweeter than honey from the tongue” applies to her rather than to that old man from Pylos.Applied in Homer to the words of Nestor (Jliad 1, 249). The whole tone of her voice is as soft as can be; not deep, so as to resemble a man’s, nor very high, so as to be quite womanish and wholly strengthless, but like the voice of a boy still immature, delicious and winning, that gently steals into the ear, so that even after she has ceased the sound abides, some remnant of it lingering and filling the ears with resonance, like an echo that prolongs audition and leaves in the soul vague traces of her words, honey-sweet and full of persuasion. And when she lifts that glorious voice in song, above all to the lyre, then—ah, then it is the hour for halcyons and cicadas and swans to hush forthwith; for they are one and all unmelodious as against her, and even Pandion’s daughter, should you mention her, is an inexpert amateur, however “soundful” the voice that she pours out.Pandion’s daughter is the nightingale; the inimitable mwodvnxéa comes from Homer (Odyssey 19, 521).
