Lucian
Lucian
Lucian of Samosatawas a rhetorician and satirist who wrote in the Greek language during the Second Sophistic. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature. Although he wrote solely in Greek, mainly Attic Greek, he was ethnically Assyrian. Lucian claimed to be a native speaker of a "barbarian tongue"which was most likely Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic...
mercy enough
Death is a mercy, and I have enough mercy to go around.
long historian relate
The only business of the historian is to relate things exactly as they are: this he can never do as long as he is afraid
accurate copies faithfully hung model next since whether
Since the model he so faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture... it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.
people spite
I paint people not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.
feels model painted painter preserving thinks took
The picture is all he feels about it, all he thinks worth preserving of it, all he invests it with. If all the qualities which a painter took from the model for his picture were really taken, no person could be painted twice.