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Well, it is really worth hearing. It seems that he had received a commission to paint a horse rolling, and painted it galloping. His patron was indignant, whereupon Pauson laughed and turned the canvas upside down, and, when the lower part became the upper, the horse now appeared to be not galloping, but rolling. Bion says that this happens to some arguments when they are inverted. So some people will say of the oracles also, not that they are excellently made because they are the god’s, but that they are not the god’s because they are poorly made! The first of these is in the realm of the unknown; but that the verses conveying the oracles are carelessly wrought is, of course, perfectly clear to you, my dear Sarapion, for you are competent to judge. You write poems in a philosophic and restrained style, but in force and grace and diction they bear more resemblance to the poems of Homer and Hesiod than to the verses put forth by the prophetic priestess.
