27
As far as personal appearance is concerned, it signifies comparatively little if one is said to be like a god. But how many there are who have copied the very names of the gods, calling themselves Dionysius, Hephaestion, Zeno, Poseidonius, Hermes! And there was a Leto, the wife of Evagoras, king of Cyprus; yet the goddess did not take on about it, though she might have turned her into stone as she did Niobe. The Egyptians I forbear to mention, who, though the most superstitious people in the world, yet use the names of the gods to their hearts’ content; in fact, most of their names are derived from Heaven.
28
It is not incumbent upon you, then, to be thus timorous in respect of praise. If any offence at all has been perpetrated against divinity in that essay, you are not accountable for it—unless you think that to listen makes one accountable; it is I whom the gods will punish, after first punishing Homer and the other poets! But to this day they have not punished the best of the philosophers for saying that man was God’s image!Hardly Plato, though he has something similar in the Republic, 501. But to him the universe is God’s image; see the end of the Timaeus. Perhaps Lucian means Diogenes, who said that good men were images of gods (Diog. Laert. 6, 51).
29
Although I might say much more to you, I shall stop for the sake of Polystratus here, so that he may be able to repeat from memory what has been said.
29
POLYSTRATUS I don’t know if that is any longer possible for me, Lycinus. Even as it is, you have made a long speech, far beyond your allowance of water. But I shall try to remember it all the same; and, as you see, I am already making off to her with my ears stopped for fear that something else may pop in to confuse its outline, and then I may have the bad luck to be hissed by my hearers!
