Icaromenippus

Menippus Let me see, now. First stage, Earth to Moon, 350 miles. Second stage, up to the Sun, 500 leagues. Then the third, to the actual Heaven and Zeus’s citadel, might be put at a day’s journey for an eagle in light marching order.

Friend In the name of goodness, Menippus, what are these astronomical sums you are doing under your breath? I have

Menippus Ah, you must not be surprised if my talk is rather exalted and ethereal; I was making out the mileage of my journey.

Friend Oh, I see; using stars to steer by, like the Phoenicians?

Menippus Oh no, travelling among them.

Friend Well, to be sure, it must have been a longish dream, if you lost yourself in it for whole leagues.

Menippus Dream, my good man? I am just come straight from Zeus. Dream, indeed!

Friend How? What? Our Menippus a literal godsend from Heaven?

Menippus Tis even so; from very Zeus I come this day, eyes and ears yet full of wonders. Oh, doubt, if you will. That my fortune should pass belief makes it only the more gratifying.

Friend Nay, my worshipful Olympian, how should I, ‘a man begotten, treading this poor earth,’ doubt him who transcends the clouds, a ‘denizen of Heaven,’ as Homer says? But vouchsafe to tell me how you were uplifted, and where you got your mighty tall ladder. There is hardly enough of Ganymede in your looks to suggest that you were carried off by the eagle for a cupbearer.

Menippus I see you are bent on making a jest of it. Well, it is extraordinary; you could not be expected to see that it is not aromance. The fact is, I needed neither ladder nor amorous eagle; I had wings of my own.

Friend Stranger and stranger! this beats Daedalus. What, you turned into a hawk or a crow on the sly?

Menippus Now that is not a bad shot; it was Daedalus’s wing trick that I tried.

Friend Well, talk of foolhardiness! did you like the idea of

No fear. Icarus’s feathers were fastened with wax, and Pe course, directly the sun warmed this, he moulted and fell. No wax for me, thank you.

Friend How did you manage, then? I declare I shall be believing you soon, if you go on like this.

Menippus Well, I caught a fine eagle, and also a particularly powerful vulture, and cut off their wings above the shoulder-joint.

But no; if you are not in a hurry, I may as well give you dhe enterprise from the beginning.

Friend Do, do; I am rapt aloft by your words already, my. mouth open for your bonne bouche; as you love me, leave me not in those upper regions hung up by the ears!

Menippus Listen, then; it would be a sorry sight, a friend deserted, with his mouth open, and sus. per aures.—Well, a very short survey of life had convinced me of the absurdity and meanness and insecurity that pervade all human objects, such as wealth, office, power. I was filled with contempt for them, realized that to care for them was to lose all chance of what deserved care, and determined to grovel no more, but fix my gaze upon the great All. Here I found my first problem in what wise men call the universal order; I could not tell how it came into being, who made it, what was its beginning, or what its end. But my next step, which was the examination of details, landed me in yet worse perplexity. I found the stars dotted quite casually about the sky, and I wanted to know what the sun was. Especially the phenomena of the moon struck me as extraordinary, and quite passed my comprehension; there must be some mystery to account for those many phases, I conjectured. Nor could I feel any greater certainty about such things as the passage of lightning, the roll of thunder, the descent of rain and snow and hail.

In this state of mind, the best I could think of was to get at the truth of it all from the people called philosophers; they of course would be able to give it me. So I selected the best of them, if solemnity of visage, pallor of complexion and length of beard are any criterion—for there could not be a moment’s doubt of their soaring words and heaven-high thoughts—and in their hands I placed myself. For a considerable sum down, and more to be paid when they should have perfected me in wisdom, I was to be made an airy metaphysician and instructed in the order of the universe. Unfortunately, so far from dispelling my previous ignorance, they perplexed me more and more, with their daily drenches of beginnings and ends, atoms and voids, matters and forms. My greatest difficulty was that, though they differed among themselves, and all they said was full of inconsistency and contradiction, they expected me to believe them, each pulling me in his own direction.

Friend How absurd that wise men should quarrel about facts, and hold different opinions on the same things!

Menippus Ah, but keep your laughter till you have heard something ” of their pretentious mystifications. To begin with, their feet are on the ground; they are no taller than the rest of us ‘men that walk the earth’; they are no sharper-sighted than their neighbours, some of them purblind, indeed, with age or indolence; and yet they say they can distinguish the limits of the sky, they measure the sun’s circumference, take their walks in the supra-lunar regions, and specify the sizes and shapes of the stars as though they had fallen from them; often one of them could not tell you correctly the number of miles from Megara to Athens, but has no hesitation about the distance in feet from the sun to the moon. How high the atmosphere is, how deep the sea, how far it is round the earth—they have the figures for all that; and moreover, they have only to draw some circles, arrange a few triangles and squares, add certain

Then, how reasonable and modest of them, dealing with subjects so debatable, to issue their views without a hint of uncertainty; thus it must be and it shall be; contra genes they will have it so; they will tell you on oath the sun is a molten mass, the moon inhabited, and the stars water-drinkers, moisture being drawn up by the sun’s rope and bucket and equitably distributed among them.

How their theories conflict is soon apparent; next-door neighbours? no, they are miles apart. In the first place, their views of the world differ. Some say it had no beginning, and cannot end; others boldly talk of its creator and his procedure; what particularly entertained me was that these latter set up a contriver of the universe, but fail to mention where he came from, or what he stood on while about his elaborate task, though it is by no means obvious how there could be place or time before the universe came into being.

Friend You really do make them out very audacious conjurers.

Menippus My dear fellow, I wish I could give you their lucubrations on ideas and incorporeals, on finite and infinite. Over that point, now, there is fierce battle; some circumscribe the All, others will have it unlimited. At the same time they declare for a plurality of worlds, and speak scornfully of others who make only one. And there is a bellicose person who maintains that war is the father of the universe 3.

As to Gods, I need hardly deal with that question. For some of them God is a number; some swear by dogs and geese and plane-trees?, Some again banish all other Gods, and attri- 1 Variously attributed to Heraclitus, who denies the possibility of repose, and insists that all things are in a state of flux; and to Empedocles, who makes all change and becoming depend on the interaction of the two principles, attraction and repulsion, 3 Socrates made a practice of substituting these for the names of Gods in his oaths,

Well, when I heard all this, I dared not disbelieve people whose voices and beards were equally suggestive of Zeus. But I knew not where to turn for a theory that was not open to exception, nor combated by one as soon as propounded by another, I found myself in the state Homer has described; many a time I would vigorously start believing one of these gentlemen; But then came second thoughts. ’ So in my distress I began to despair of ever getting any knowledge about these things on earth; the only possible escape from perplexity would be to take to myself wings and go up to Heaven, Partly the wish was father to the thought; but it was confirmed by Aesop’s Fables, from which it appears that Heaven is accessible to eagles, beetles, and sometimes camels. It was pretty clear that I could not possibly develop feathers of my own. But if I were to wear vulture’s or eagle’s wings— the only kinds equal to a man’s weight—I might perhaps succeed. I caught the birds, and effectually amputated the eagle’s right, and the vulture’s left wing. These I fastened together, attached them to my shoulders with broad thick straps, and provided grips for my hands near the end of the

Getting safely to the bottom that time, my aspirations shot up aloft. I took to starting from Parnes or Hymettus, flying to. Geranea, thence to the top of the Acrocorinthus, and over Pholoé and Erymanthus to Taygetus. The training for my venture was now complete; my powers were developed, and equal to a lofty flight; no more fledgeling essays for me. I went up Olympus, provisioning myself as lightly as possible. The moment was come; I soared skywards, giddy at first with that great void below, but soon conquering this difficulty. When I approached the Moon, long after parting from the clouds, I was conscious of fatigue, especially in the left or vulture’s wing. So I alighted and sat down to rest, having a_bird’s-eye view of the Earth, like the Homeric Zeus,

Friend Oh well, Menippus, tell me all about it. I do not want to miss a single one of your travel experiences; if you picked up any stray information, let me have that too. I promise myself a great many facts about the shape of the Earth, and how everything on it looked to you from your point of vantage.

Menippus And you will not be disappointed there, friend. So do your best to get up to the Moon, with my story for travelling companion and showman of the terrestrial scene.

Imagine yourself first descrying a tiny Earth, far smaller than the Moon looks; on turning my eyes down, I could not think

Friend Most unconvincing and contradictory. Just now you were searching for the Earth, it was so diminished by distance, and if the Colossus had not betrayed it, you would have taken it for something else; and now you develop suddenly into a Lynceus, and distinguish everything upon it, the men, the beasts, one might almost say the gnat-swarms. Explain, please.

Menippus Why, tobesure! how did I come to leave out so essential a particular? I had made out the Earth, you see, but could not distinguish any details; the distance was so great, quite beyond the scope of my vision; so I was much chagrined and baffled. At this moment of depression—I was very near tears—who should come up behind me but Empedocles the physicist? His complexion was like charcoal variegated with ashes, as if he had been baked. I will not deny that I felt some tremors at the sight of him, taking him for some lunar spirit. But he said ‘Do not be afraid, Menippus;

I am Empedocles the physicist. When I threw myself into the crater in such a hurry, the smoke of Etna whirled me off up here; and now I live in the Moon, doing a good deal of high thinking on a diet of dew. So I have come to help you out of your difficulty; you are distressed, I take it, at not being able to see

‘I have no idea, unless you were to remove the mist from my eyes for me; the sight seems quite bleared.’ ‘Oh, you can do without me; the thing that gives sharp sight you have brought with you from Earth.’ ‘Unconsciously, then; what is it??. ‘Why, you know that you have on an eagle’s right wing?? ‘Of course I do; but what have wings and eyes to do with one another?? ‘Only this,’ he said; ‘the eagle is far the strongest-eyed of all living things, the only one that can look straight at the sun; the test of the true royal eagle is, his meeting its rays without blinking.’ ‘So I have heard; I wish I had taken out my own eyes when I was starting, and substituted the eagle’s. I am an imperfect specimen now I am here, not up to the royal standard at all, but like the rejected bastards.’ ‘Well, you can very soon acquire one royal eye. If you will stand up for a minute, keep the vulture wing still, and work the other, your right eye, corresponding to that wing, will gain strength. As for the other, its dimness cannot possibly be obviated, as it belongs to the inferior member.’ 'Oh, I shall be quite content with aquiline vision for the right eye only,’ I said; ‘I have often observed that carpenters in ruling their wood find one better than two.’ So saying, I proceeded to carry out my instructions at once. Empedocles began gradually to disappear, and at last vanished in smoke.

I had no sooner flapped the wing than a flood of light enveloped me, and things that before I had not even been aware

Such was the entertainment afforded me by royalty; private life was much more amusing; for I could make that out too. I saw Hermodorus the Epicurean perjuring himself for £40, Agathocles the Stoic suing a pupil for his fees, lawyer Clinias stealing a bowl from the temple of Asclepius, and Herophilus the cynic sleeping in a brothel. Not to mention the multitude of burglars, litigants, usurers, duns; oh, it was a fine representative show!

Friend I must say, Menippus, I should have liked the details here too; it all seems to have been very much to your taste.

Menippus I could not go through the whole of it, even to please you; to take it in with the eyes kept one busy. But the main divisions were very much what Homer gives from the shield of Achilles: here junketings and marriages, there courts and councils, in another compartment a sacrifice, and hard by a mourning. If I glanced at Getica, I would see the Getae at war; at Scythia, there were the Scythians wandering about on their waggons; half a turn in another direction gave me Egyptians

All this was simultaneous, you understand; and you must try to conceive what a queer jumble it all made. It was as if aman were to collect a number of choristers, or rather of choruses[*](The Greek chorus combined singing with dancing.), and then tell each individual to disregard the others and start a strain of his own; if each did his best, went his own way, and tried to drown his neighbour, can you imagine what the musical effect would be?

Friend A very ridiculous confusion.

Menippus Well, friend, such are the earthly dancers; the life of man is just such a discordant performance; not only are the voices jangled, but the steps are not uniform, the motions not concerted, the objects not agreed upon—until the impresario dismisses them one by one from the stage, with a ‘not wanted.’ Then they are all alike, and quiet enough, confounding no longer their undisciplined rival strains. But as long as the show lasts in its marvellous diversity, there is plenty of food for _ laughter in its vagaries.

The people who most amused me, however, were those who dispute about boundaries, or pride themselves on cultivating the plain of Sicyon, or holding the Oenoé side of Marathon, or a thousand acres at Acharnae. The whole of Greece, as I then saw it, might measure some four inches; how much smaller Athens on the same scale. So I realized what sort of sized basis for their pride remains to our rich men. The widest-acred of them all, methought, was the proud cultivator of an Epicurean atom. Then I looked at the Peloponnese, my eyes fell on the Cynurian district, and the thought occurred that it was for this little plot, no broader than an Egyptian lentil, that all those Argives and Spartans fell in a single day, Or if I saw a man puffed up by the possession of seven or eight

Friend You lucky man! what a rare sight you had! And how big, now, did the towns and the people look from there?

Menippus You must often have seen a community of ants, some of them a seething mass, some going abroad, others coming back to town. One is a scavenger, another a bustling porter loaded with a bit of bean-pod or half a wheat grain. They no doubt have, on their modest myrmecic scale, their architects and politicians, their magistrates and composers and philosophers. At any rate, what men and cities suggested to me was just so many ant-hills. If you think the similitude too disparaging, look into the Thessalian legends, and you will find that the most warlike tribe there was the Myrmidons, or ants turned men. Well, when I had had enough of contemplation and laughter, I roused myself and soared

I had only flown a couple of hundred yards, when Selene’s feminine voice reached me: ‘Menippus, do me an errand to Zeus, and I will wish you a pleasant journey.’ ‘You have only to name it,’ I said, ‘provided it is not something to carry. ‘It is a simple message of entreaty to Zeus. I am tired to death, you must know, of being slandered by these philosophers; they have no better occupation than impertinent curiosity about me—What am I? how big am 1? why am I halved? why am I gibbous? Iam inhabited; I am just a mirror hung over the sea; I am—whatever their latest fancy suggests. It is the last straw when they say my light is stolen, sham, imported from the sun, and keep on doing their best to get up jealousy and ill feeling between brother and sister. They might have been contented with making him out a stone or a red-hot lump.