Summer 2026 · Torch: U.S. · PAMPHILUS AND EUPOMPUS
18
lies in reserving all the wine for the gods, as we mortals are unfit to partake in any of it.” Such thoughts ran through Menaster’s squarish head while he strutted, and his path was always clear: passersby kept out of his way, though they nodded in sullen deference. As he flung open the temple doors, he bellowed, “Hippias! Show me the work of the contestants from this week! I will choose which shall get the commission!”
Hippias replied, too eagerly: “Venerable Menaster, it would be quicker if I showed you only the work of the winner, for his was so superior—”
“Hmph,” said Menaster, and marched to the closet. Hippias produced a painting covered in linen. Menaster snatched it, tore the cloth away—and fell into violent coughing.
“IDIOT!” he screamed when he could breathe. “You animals really are blind drunk. This is the most gruesome painting I have ever seen: it has no exalted beauty of any sort, it seems dank and deep and horrifically real. Anyone who sees it would be terrified, and never suspect the countenances depicted to be those of gods—this one seems like a common wench staring out of a dark doorway!”
Hippias, pale, offered to bring the other paintings. Menaster examined them one by one and hated them all, and when he heard that Eupompus had declined to submit, the blood rose in his head like a boil. He would go to Eupompus, he decided, and talk sense into that ageing painter who had grown too indulgent of youthful tricks.
“Priest Menaster,” Eupompus asked when the man arrived, “do you truly wish to uphold such a judgment of this young man’s work?”
“Yes, Eupompus. I have some respect for you as a man, and I am grateful to your work for having raised the reputation of Sicyon—but I cannot stomach the images of this youngster you promote. In fact, I still feel ill from having seen them. Give me some of your wine; it will soothe my stomach.”
Eupompus poured. Menaster drank, then demanded to see the painter, muttering of banishment.
Pamphilus was fetched, ignorant of the storm he had wandered into. He entered with the stiff politeness of someone who has only ever bowed to power.
“Oh, venerated priest,” Pamphilus said, “it is an honour to meet you.”
Menaster’s face tightened into disgust.
“Young Pamphilus,” he began, “I have seen the work you submitted, and I cannot accept it. It is a total affront to the cultivated sensibility of religion, and will doubtlessly enrage the public who might have the misfortune of beholding it.”
At those words Pamphilus fainted into Eupompus’s arms.
Here, in a just world, the story would end in ashes.
But Sicyon, as it happened, was a city that loved painting more than it loved priests.
The next day, Pamphilus’s Artemis stood in a corner of the Dionysian temple—set there under the pretense of “public judgment,” a scheme Eupompus had contrived with a visiting Athenian priest who had seen the panel and—unlike Menaster—possessed eyes. Although no services were held, a sign was posted outside the doors:
A surprisingly large number of people came—men who did not even worship there, women who did not attend temples at all, boys who came only to scoff and remained, strangely quiet, before Artemis’s stare. Hippias kept a tally of favorable and disfavorable votes, though he suspected it would do little to convince Menaster. The priest himself stayed shut up in his back room, but he could not block out the sounds of praise coming through the wall.
Around two o’clock he ran out of wine, but he was too embarrassed to leave and get more.
By the end of the day, the praise tallies outnumbered the vetoes by around five times.
Hippias wore a quizzical smile. Aristion chuckled in a corner. Together they went to report the result.
"PLEASE ENTER PRONAOS TO VIEW PAINTING BY DISPUTED WINNER OF MURAL CONTEST, AND REPORT YOUR OPINION TO THE ATTENDANT."