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7/6/2025, 1:23:50 PM
>To a Woman: Do not ever wear shoes, or conceal your ankles with false and deceptive skins, whose beauty, which consists in their dye, is illusory. For if you wear white, you obscure the whiteness of your feet (since like in the midst of like does not show); and if you wear the colour of larkspur, you offend the eye by the darkness of the shade; and if crimson, you cause fright, as if blood were flowing somewhere in the shoe. I wish that all the rest of you were visible; and you would actually possess far more power, exposing your whole body to the spectators’ eager pursuit. Well, be a bit economical of other features, if you will, and do not begrudge them protection or such coverings as are indispensable; but leave your feet at least bare like your neck, your cheeks, your locks, like your nose and eyes. To be sure, wherever nature has erred, the damage requires clever treatment, in order that art may conceal the defect; but where beauty suffices for its own display, remedial measures are superfluous. Be self-reliant and trust to your feet! These even fire will spare, these even the sea; and if you wish to cross a river, the river will stay its course, and if you wish to scale crags, you will seem to yourself to be treading on meadows. Thus Thetis was called “silver-footed” by the poet who had exact knowledge of all of beauty’s highest forms; thus Aphroditê too, as she rises from the sea, is depicted by the painters; thus too the daughters of Leucippus. Keep your feet in readiness for those who fain would kiss them; and wear no bonds, even of gold.
Philostratus, Letter 36
Philostratus, Letter 36
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