Oration to the Greeks 34

Very venerable too is the tyrant Phalaris, who feasted on babies at the breast, yet is displayed to this day, through the work of Polystratus of Ambracia, as if he were an admirable man! The people of Acragas dreaded to look at that face of his because of his cannibalism, but those who care about culture boast that they can gaze on him in a statue. How is it not grievous that fratricide is honored among you, who look at the figures of Polynices and Eteocles and do not throw them into a pit along with their maker Pythagoras? Destroy these memorials of wickedness! Why should I think the statue by Periclymenus, of a woman who bore thirty children, a wonder and study it? She who carried off the prize for great incontinence ought to have been loathed, likened to the sow of the Romans, which itself, for the same reason, has been thought worthy, they say, of a rather mystic worship. Ares committed adultery with Aphrodite, and Andron made for you Harmonia, their daughter. Sophron, who handed down trifles and nonsense in his writings, is more famous because of his bronze statue, which exists to this day. And the lying Aesop was made ever-memorable not only by his fables but also by the sculpture of Aristodemus, which made him much sought after. How then are you not ashamed, when you have so many poetesses of no use, and countless prostitutes and wicked men, to slander the modesty of our women? What is the value to me of learning that Euanthe gave birth in the Peripatos, of gaping at the art of Callistratus, or of fixing my eyes on the Neaera of Calliades? She was a courtesan. Lais was a prostitute, and Turnus made her a memorial of her prostitution. Why are you not ashamed of Hephaestion's sexual immorality, even if Philo portrays him with great skill? And why have you honored the effeminate Ganymede, through Leochares, as if you had a precious possession? Praxiteles made a sculpture of a woman being defiled. You ought to reject everything of this kind and seek what is truly worthwhile, and not, while laying claim to the unspeakable inventions of Philaenis and Elephantis, loathe our way of life.