Icaromenippus

FRIEND You lucky Menippus, what a surprising spectacle !

But the cities and the men—for Heaven’s sake, how did they look from on high ?

MENIPPUS 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,

1. 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,

1. ‘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:

1. 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:

1. “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.”