Icaromenippus

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 2. Harmon, A. M., editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1915.

MENIPPUS 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.

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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 chimney[*](Jn 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

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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

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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.

FRIEND Really, you might as well tell about that too, Menippus, for it scems to have given you unusual pleasure.

MENIPPUS To tell it all from first to last, my friend, would be

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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 ?

FRIEND Utterly ridiculous, Menippus, and all confused.

MENIPPUS Well, my friend, such is the part that all carth’s singers play, and such is the discord that makes

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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.