The exploration of the ancient aesthetics of deception takes its cue from Gorgias fr. B 23 DK. After contemplating the fragment in its original contexts – Plutarch cites it in two different treatises – I will argue that Gorgias’ assertion derives its poignancy from the transformation of several topoi. What reads like a mere witticism is the result of a crossing of an epistemological tradition with an ethical paradox and a poetological premise, all under the auspices of aesthetics.