Tiresias: The Ancient Mediterranean Religions Source Database

7540

Lucian, Prometheus, 5

nan I am afraid my work is a camel in Egypt, and men’s admiration limited to the bridle and purple housings; as to combinations, though the components may be of the most beautiful (as Comedy and Dialogue in the present case), that will not ensure a good effect, unless the mixture is harmonious and well proportioned; it is possible that the resultant of two beauties may be bizarre. The readiest instance to hand is the centaur[1]: not a lovely creature, you will admit, but a savage, if the paintings of its drunken bouts and murders go for anything. Well, but on the other hand is it not possible for two such components to result in beauty, as the combination of wine and honey in superlative sweetness? That is my belief; but I am not prepared to maintain that my components have that property; I fear the mixture may only have obscured their separate beauties. [1] centaur | The centaurs are described to us as monsters of Thessaly, half men and half horses; a fable which probably took its rise from the Thessalians being the first people who made the proper use of horses; it is natural to suppose that such an appearance might convey to those who followed them the idea of a monster, half man and half beast: a country squire always on horseback is to this day little better.5)

Intertexts (texts cited often on the same page as the searched text):

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subject	book bibliographic info
centaur	Mheallaigh (2014) 5
classicism	Mheallaigh (2014) 5
hybridity	Mheallaigh (2014) 5
lucian,and originality	Mheallaigh (2014) 5
metaliterary symbols,clay	Mheallaigh (2014) 5
mimesis	Mheallaigh (2014) 5
novelty	Mheallaigh (2014) 5
prolaliai'	Mheallaigh (2014) 5
prometheus	Mheallaigh (2014) 5
zeuxis	Mheallaigh (2014) 5