21
That flatterers do not hesitate to lie for the sake of pleasing the objects of their praise, whereas those who really praise try to magnify what actually exists, is not the only distinguishing mark of each. They differ in a further point, and not a trivial one, that flatterers use hyperbole to the full extent of their powers, while those who really praise are discreet in precisely that particular and remain within their bounds.
21
These are a few out of many earmarks of flattery and of genuine praise which I give you so that you may not suspect all who praise you, but may distinguish between them and gauge each by his proper standard.
22
Come then, apply, if you will, both canons to my words, that you may discover whether they conform to this one or the other. If it had been some ugly woman whom I likened to the statue in Cnidos, I might indeed be accounted a liar, and a worse flatterer than Cynaethus. But since it was one whose beauty is known to all, the venture was not a salto mortale.
23
Perhaps, then, you may say—indeed, you have already said—that you concede my right to praise you for your beauty, but that I should have made my praise unexceptionable and should not have compared a mortal woman with goddesses. As a matter of fact (now she is going to make me speak the truth!) it was not with goddesses I compared you, my dear woman, but with masterpieces of good craftsmen, made of stone or bronze or ivory; and what man has made, it is not impious, I take it, to compare with man. But perhaps you have assumed that what Phidias fashioned is Athena, and that what Praxiteles made in Cnidus not many years ago is Heavenly Aphrodite? Come now, would it not be unworthy to hold such beliefs about the gods, whose real images I for my part assume to be unattainable by human mimicry?
