You lucky Menippus, what a surprising spectacle !
But the cities and the men—for Heaven’s sake, how
did they look from on high ?
I suppose you have often seen a swarm of ants,
in which some are huddling together about the
mouth of the hole and transacting affairs of state in
public, some are going out and others are coming
back again to the city; one is carrying out the dung,
and another has caught up the skin of a bean or half
a grain of wheat somewhere and is running off with
it; and no doubt there are among them, in due proportion to the habits of ants, builders, politicians,
aldermen, musicians, and philosophers. But however that may be, the cities with their population
resembled nothing so much as ant-hills. If you think
it is belittling to compare men with the institutions
of ants, look up the ancient fables of the Thessalians
and you will find that the Myrmidons, the most
warlike of races, turned from ants into men.
Well, when I had looked and laughed at everything to my heart’s content, I shook myself and flew
upward,
Unto the palace of Zeus, to the home of the other
immortals.Iliad1, 222.
Before I had gone a furlong upward, the moon spoke
with a voice like a woman’s and said: “Menippus,
Pll thank you kindly to do me a service with Zeus.”
"Tell me what it is,’ said I, “it will be no trouble
at all, unless you want me to carry something.”
"Take a simple message and a request from me to
Zeus. I am tired at last, Menippus, of hearing
quantities of dreadful abuse from the philosophers,
who have nothing else to do but to bother about me,
what I am, how big I am, and why I become semicircular, or crescent-shaped. Some of them say I am
inhabited, others that I hang over the sea like a
mirror, and others ascribe to me—oh, anything that
each man’s fancy prompts. Lately they even say
that my very light is stolen and illegitimate, coming
from the sun up above, and they never weary of
wanting to entangle and embroil me with him,
although he is my brother; for they were not
satisfied with saying that Helius himself was a stone,
and a glowing mass of molten metal.
“But am I not aware of all the shameful,
abominable deeds they do at night, they who by
day are dour-visaged, resolute of cye, majestic of
mien and the cynosure of the general public? Yet
although I see all this, I keep quiet about it, for
I do not think it decent to expose and illumine
those nocturnal pastimes of theirs and their life
behind the scenes. On the contrary, if I see one
of them committing adultery or thieving or making
bold to do anything else that best befits the night,
I draw my garment of cloud together and _ veil
my face at once, in order that I may not let the
common people see old men bringing discredit on
their long beards and on virtue. But they for their
part never desist from picking me to pieces in talk
and _ insulting me in every way, so that I vow by
Night, I have often thought of moving as far away as
possible to a place where I might escape their
meddling tongues.
"So be sure to report all this to Zeus and to add,
too, that I cannot remain in my place unless he
destroys the .natural philosophers, muzzles the
logicians, razes the Porch, burns down the Academy,
and stops the lectures in the Walks; for only then
can I get a rest and cease to be surveyed by them
every day.”
“Very well,” said I, and therewith I pressed on
upwards along the road to Heaven,
‘Whence there was naught to be seen of the labours
of men or of oxen ;Od. 10, 98.
for in a little while even the moon seemed small to me,
and the earth had at last disappeared from my view.
Taking the sun on my right and flying past the
stars, on the third day out I drew near to Heaven.
At first I made up my mind to go straight in without
more ado, for I thought I should easily escape
observation, as I was half eagle and I knew that the
eagle was on intimate terms with Zeus from of old;
but afterwards I concluded that they would very
soon find me out because the other wing that I wore
was a vulture’s. Thinking it best, anyhow, not to
take any unnecessary chances, I went up and knocked
at the door. Hermes answered my knock, inquired
my name, and went off in haste to tell Zeus. In a
little while I was admitted in great fear and
trembling, and found them all sitting together, not
without apprehension themselves; for my visit,
being so unprecedented, had put them in a quiet
flutter, and they almost expected the whole human
race to arrive at any moment, provided with wings
like maine.
Zeus, however, looked at me with a
fierce, Titanic stare and said in a very terrible
voice:
What is your name, sir, whence do you come, and
where is your city and hearth-stone ?The line occurs frequently in the Odyssey, e.g. 1, 170.
When I heard this, I nearly dropped dead of
fright, but stood my ground all the same, though
my jaw was hanging and I was thunderstruck by
the loudness of his voice. But in time I pulled
myself together and told him the whole story
clearly, starting at the very beginning—how I
wanted to learn about the heavenly bodies, how I
went to the philosophers, how I heard them contradicting each other, how I got tired of being
pulled this way and that by their arguments, and
then about my idea and the wings and all the rest of
it till my arrival in Heaven ; and at the end I added
the message of the moon. Smiling and unbending
a little, Zeus remarked: “What can one say to Otus
and Ephialtes when even a Menippus has the
hardihood to come up to Heaven? However, we
invite you to be our guest for to-day, and to-morrow,
after we have taken action on the matters about
which you have come, we shall send you away.”
With that he arose and walked toward the best
place in Heaven for hearing, as it was time to sit and
listen to the prayers.
As he walked along he asked me about things on
earth, first the usual questions, how much wheat now
costs in Greece, whether the last winter hit us hard
and whether the crops needed more rain. Then he
inquired whether any of the descendants of Phidias
were still left, why the Athenians had omitted the
Diasia for so many years, whether they had any idea
of finishing the Olympieion for him and whether the
men who robbed his temple in Dodona had been
arrested.The temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens was completed by Hadrian a generation before these lines were written ; and, if we may trust a casual reference to the Diasia in Plutarch (de tranquil, an. 20), that festival had been reinstituted in some form or other. Here again Lucian seems to be following Menippus.
When I had answered these questions, he said:
“Tell me, Menippus, what opinion do men hold
about me?
“Tell me, Menippus, what opinion do men hold
about me?” “What opinion should they hold, sir,”
said I, “except the highest possible one, that you
are king of all the gods?” “You are fond of your
joke,” said he, “but I am thoroughly acquainted
with their craze for novelty even without your telling
me. There was once a time when they looked
upon me as a prophet and a healer, and I was all
in all ;
“Yea, full of Zeus were all the streets
And all the marts of men.’
At that time Dodona and Pisa were rich and highly
regarded by all, and I could not even see for the
smoke of the sacrifices. But since Apollo founded
his oracle at Delphi and Asclepius his hospital in
Pergamos and the temple of Bendis arose in Thrace
and the temple of Anubis in Egypt and the temple
of Artemis in Ephesus, these are the places where
they all run and celebrate feast-days and bring hecatombs, and offer up ingots of gold, while I, they
think, being past my prime, am sufficiently honoured
if they sacrifice to me once every four whole years
at Olympia. Consequently, you can see for yourself
that my altars are more frigid than the Laws of
Plato or the Syllogisms of Chrysippus.”