M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
back: had he looked and walked straight ahead he had not rued. Enough of similes. For this, too, is somewhat unconvincing, this simile of Orpheus fetched up from Hades.
4. But I will now for the rest plead in excuse what will most easily win me pardon. What, then, is this? That in writing the Emperor's encomium I was doing, in the first place, what was especially gratifying to you and your son; in the next I remembered and mentioned both of you in the composition, just as lovers name their darlings over every cup. But, indeed, the craftmanship of similes is an insinuating thing and grows on us. This one, at any rate, has occurred to me, which I add to all the others, and irideed it can most fairly be called a simile (or likeness), being taken from a painter. Protogenes the painter is said to have taken eleven[1] years to paint his Ialysus, painting nothing but the Ialysus all those eleven years. But, as for me, I painted not one but two Ialysuses at once, being no ordinary ones either of them, nor easy to depict, not only in respect of their faces and figures, but also of their characters and qualities, for the one is the great Imperator of all land and sea, and the other the great Imperator's son, his child in the same way as Athene is of Zeus, but thy son as Hephaestus is of Hera. But let there be no "halting"[2] in this simile from Hephaestus. This defence of mine, then, would seem to be wholly verisimilous and picturesque, full as it is in itself of similes entirely.
5. It remains that I should, after the fashion of geometers, ask—what? If any word in this letter be
- ↑ Plutarch (Demetr. 22) says seven years, cp. Pliny, N.H. xxxv. 30, §§ 10, 20.
- ↑ For the lame Hephaestus see Hom. Il. i. ad fin.
