1–2
Doris Doris in Lucian is always the daughter and never the wife of Nereus. and Galatea
DORIS
A good-looking lover they say you have, Galatea, in this Sicilian shepherd who’s so mad about you!
GALATEA
None of your jokes, Doris. He’s Poseidon’s son, whatever he looks like.
DORIS
What of it? Though it was a son of Zeus himself that had so wild and hairy an appearance and, most hideous thing of all, only one eye, do you think his birth would help him to be any better-looking?
GALATEA
His wild and hairy appearance, as you call it, isn’t ugly. It’s manly. And his eye goes very nicely with his forehead, and it sees just as well as if it were two.
DORIS
My dear Galatea, from the way you’re praising him, it looks as if your Polyphemus is more loved than loving.
5
GALATEA
That’s not true; but the way you all criticise him annoys me. If you ask me, I think you’re jealous of the day when, looking after his sheep, he caught sight of us from his watch-point, as we were playing on the shore at the foot of Etna, where there’s a long stretch of beach between the mountain and the sea. He didn’t even look at you, but thought me the prettiest of us all, and was all eye for me and me only. That’s what’s annoying you; because it proves that I’m better than any of you, and that I deserve to be loved. None of you got so much as a glance.
