Thanks for reminding me; somehow or other I
neglected to say what I certainly should have said.
When I recognised the earth by sight, but was
unable to distinguish anything else on account of the
height, because my vision did not carry so far, the
thing annoyed me excessively and put me in a great
quandary. I was downcast and almost in tears when
the philosopher Empedocles came and stood behind
me, looking like a cinder, as he was covered with
ashes and all burned up. On catching sight of him
I wasa bit startled, to tell the truth, and thought I
beheld a lunar spirit ; but he said “Don’t be alarmed,
Menippus;
No god am I: why liken me to them? Od. 16, 187.
I am the natural philosopher Empedocles, at your
service. You see, when I threw myself head-first
into the crater, the smoke snatched me out of
Aetna and brought me up here, and now I dwell in
the moon, although I walk the air a great deal, and
I live on dew. So I have come to get you out of
your present quandary ; for it annoys and torments
you, I take it, that you cannot clearly see everything
on earth.” “Thank you very much, Empedocles,”
said I; “you are most kind, and as soon as I fly
down to Greece again I will remember to pour you a
drink-offering in the chimneyJn the chimney, because the burned and blackened appearance of Empedocles suggested this as the most appropriate spot; and then too, the smoke goes up to the moon. and on the first: of
every month to open my mouth at the moon three
times and make a prayer.” “Great Endymion !”
said he, “I didn’t come here for pay; my heart was
touched a bit when I saw you sorrowful. Do you
know what to do in order to become sharp-sighted ?”
“No,” said I, “unless you are going to take the mist
from my eyes somehow. At present my sight seems
to be uncommonly blurred.” “Why,” said he, “you
won’t need my services at all, for you yourself have
brought the power of sharp sight with you from
the earth.” “What is it, then, for I don’t know?” I
said. “Don’t you know,” said he, “that you are
wearing the right wing of an cagle?” “Of course,”
said I, “but what is the connection between wings
and eyes?” “This,” said he; “the eagle so far
surpasses all the other creatures in strength of sight
that he alone can look square at the sun, and the
mark of the genuine royal cagle is that he can face
its rays without winking an eye.” “So they say,” I
replied, “and I am sorry now that when I came up
here I did not take out my own eyes and put in those
of the eagle. As things are, I have come in a_halffinished condition and with an equipment which is
not fully royal; in fact, I am like the bastard, disowned eaglets they tell about.”If an eaglet failed to stand the test, he was pushed out of the nest; cf. Aelian de Nat, Anim, 2, 26. “Why,” said he,
“it is in your power this minute to have one eye
royal, for if you choose to stand up a moment, hold
the vulture’s wing still, and flap only the other one,
you will become sharp-sighted in the right eye to
match the wing; the other eye cannot possibly help
being duller, as it is on the inferior side.” It will
satisfy me,” said I, “if only the right one has the
sight of an eagle; it would do just as well, for I am
sure I have often seen carpenters getting on better
with only one eye when they were trimming off
timbers to the straight-edge.”
This said, I set about doing as Empedocles advised,
while he receded little by little and gradually dissolved into smoke.
No sooner had I flapped the
wing than a great light broke upon me and all that
was formerly invisible was revealed. Bending down
toward earth, I clearly saw the cities, the people and
all that they* were doing, not only abroad but at
home, when they thought they were unobserved. I
saw Ptolemy lying with his sister, Lysimachus’ son
conspiring against his father, Seleucus’ son Antiochus
flirting surreptitiously with his stepmother, Alexander
of ‘Thessaly getting killed by his wife, Antigonus
committing adultery with the wife of his son, and
the son of Attalus pouring out the poison for him.
In another quarter I saw Arsaces killing the woman,
the eunuch Arbaces drawing his sword on Arsaces,
and Spatinus the Mede in the hands of the guards,
being dragged out of the dining-room by the leg
after having had his head broken with a golden
cup.These events, in so far as they are historical, are not synchronous. For some of them (Antigonus, Attalus, and the Parthian incidents) Lucian is our only sponsor. Similar things were to be seen going on in
Libya and among the Thracians and Scythians in the
palaces of kings—men committing adultery, murdering, conspiring, plundering, forswearing, fearing
and falling victims to the treason of their closest kin.
Although the doings of the kings afforded me such
rare amusement, those of the common people were
far more ridiculous, for I could see them too—
Hermodorus the Epicurean perjuring himself for a
thousand drachmas, the Stoie Agathocles going to
law with his disciple about a fee, the orator Clinias
stealing a cup out of the Temple of Asclepius and the
Cynic Herophilus asleep in the brothel. Why mention
the rest of them—the burglars, the bribe-takers, the
money-lenders, the beggars? In brief, it was a motley
and manifold spectacle.
Really, you might as well tell about that too,
Menippus, for it scems to have given you unusual
pleasure.
To tell it all from first to last, my friend, would be
impossible in such a case, where even to see it all
was hard work. However, the principal features
were like what Homer says was on the shield.Iliad 18, 478 ff. In
one place there were banquets and weddings, elsewhere there were sessions of court and assemblics ;
in a different direction a man was offering sacrifice,
and close at hand another was mourning a death.
Whenever I looked at the country of the Getae I
saw them fighting ; whenever I transferred my gaze to
the Seythians, they could be seen roving about on their
wagons: and when I turned my eyes aside slightly,
I beheld the Egyptians working the land. The Phoenicians were on trading-ventures, the Cilicians were
engaged in piracy, the Spartans were whipping themselves and the Athenians were attending court.
As
all these things were going on at the same time, you
can imagine what a hodge-podge it looked. It is as
if one should put on the stage a company of singers,
or I should say a number of companies, and then
should order each singer to abandon harmony and
sing a tune of his own; with cach one full of
emulation and carrying his own tune and striving to
outdo his neighbour in loudness of voice, what, in the
name of Heaven, do you suppose the song would be
like ?
Utterly ridiculous, Menippus, and all confused.
Well, my friend, such is the part that all carth’s
singers play, and such is the discord that makes
up the life of men. Not only do they sing different
tunes, but they are unlike in costume and move at
cross-purposes in the dance and agree in nothing
until the manager drives each of them off the stage,
saying that he has no further use for him. After
that, “however, they are all quiet alike, no longer
singing that unrhythmical medley of theirs. But
there in the play-house itself, full of variety and
shifting spectacles, everything that took place was
truly laughable.
I was especially inclined to laugh at the people who
quarrelled about boundary-lines, and at those who
plumed themselves on working the plain of Sicyon
or possessing the district of Oenoe in Marathon or
owning a thousand acres in Acharnae. As a matter
of fact, since the whole of Greece as it looked to
me then from on high was no bigger than four
fingers, on that scale surely Attica was infinitesimal.
I thought, therefore, how little there was for our
friends the rich to be proud of ; for it seemed to me
that the widest-acred of them all had but a single
Epicurean atom under cultivation. And when I
looked toward the Peloponnese and caught sight
of Cynuria, I noted what a tiny region, no bigger in
any way than an Egyptian bean, had caused so many
Argives and Spartans to fall in a single day.Compare the close of the Charon. Again,
if T saw any man pluming himself on gold because
he had eight rings and four cups, I laughed heartily
at him too, for the whole of Pangacum, mines and
all, was the size of a grain of millet.