Well then, Polystratus, trade me description for
description, giving, as the saying goes, measure for
measure, or even better than that, since you can.
Do a likeness of her soul and display it to me, so
‘that I need not admire her by halves.
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.
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).
And as for Orpheus
and Amphion, who exercised so very potent a spell
upon their auditors that even inanimate things
answered the call of their song, they themselves
in my opinion would have abandoned their lyres,
had they heard her, and would have stood by in
silence, listening. That scrupulous observance of
time, so that she makes no mistakes in the rhythm,
but her singing throughout keeps measure with
a beat that is accurate in its rise and fall,
while
her lyre is in full accord, and her plectrum keeps
pace with her tongue; that delicacy of touch; that
flexibility of modulations—how could all this be
attained by your Thracian, or by that other who
studied lyre-playing on the slopes of Cithaeron in
the intervals of tending cattle ?
Orpheus and Amphion, respectively.
Therefore, if ever you hear her sing, Lycinus, not
only will you have learned by experience, through
being turned into stone, what the Gorgons can do,
but you will know also what the effect of the Sirens
was like; for you will stand there enchanted, I know
right well, forgetful of country and of kin; and
if you stop your ears with wax, the song, in spite
of you, will slip through the very wax! Such
music is it, a lesson learned of some Terpsichore or
Melpomene, or of Calliope herself, fraught with a
thousand witcheries of every sort. I may sum it
up by saying: “Imagine that you are listening to
such singing as would naturally come from such
lips and from those teeth.” You yourself have seen
the lady in question, so consider that you have
heard her.