We determined to go still further inland, but
we met what they call the Vulture Dragoons,
and were arrested. These are men riding on large


 

vultures and using the birds for horses. The
vultures are large and for the most part have
three heads: you can judge of their size from the
fact that the mast of a large merchantman is not
so long or so thick as the smallest of the quills they
have.
 Cf. Odyss. 9, 322f. 
The Vulture Dragoons are commissioned to
fly about the country and bring before the king any
stranger they may find, so of course they arrested us
and brought us before him.



When he had looked us
over and drawn his conclusions from our clothes, he
said: “Then you are Greeks, are you, strangers?”
and when we assented, “Well, how did you get here,
with so much air to cross?" We told him all, and
he began and told us about himself: that he too was
a human being, Endymion by name, who had once
been ravished from our country in his sleep, and on
coming there had been made king of the land. He
said that his country was the moon that shines down
on us.
 The story of Antonius Diogenes included a description of
a trip to the moon (Phot. 1lla). Compare also Tucian’s
own Icaromenippus. 
He urged us to take heart, however, and
suspect no danger, for we should have everything
that we required.

 
“And if I succeed,” said he,
“in the war which I am now making on the people
of the sun, you shall lead the happiest of lives with
me.” We asked whothe enemy were, and what the
quarrel was about. “Phaethon,’ said he, “the king
of the inhabitants of the sun—for it is inhabited,
 Cf. Lactantius 3, 23, 41: “Seneca says that there have
been Stoics who raised the question of ascribing to the sun
a population of its own." 

 

you know, as well as the moon—has been at war with
us for a long time now. It began in this way. Once
upon a time I gathered together the poorest people
in my kingdom and undertook to plant a colony on
the Morning Star, which was empty and uninhabited.
Phaethon out of jealousy thwarted the colonisation,
meeting us half-way at the head of his Ant Dragoons.
At that time we were beaten, for we were not a
match for them in strength, and we retreated:
now, however, I desire to make war again and plant.
the colony. If you wish, then, you may take part
with me in the expedition and I will give each of
you one of my royal vultures and a complete outfit.
We shall take the field to-morrow.” “Very well,”
said I, “since you think it best.”

 


That night we stopped there as his guests, but
at daybreak we arose and took our posts, for the
scouts signalled that the enemy was near. The
number of our army was a hundred thousand, apart
from the porters, the engineers, the infantry and the
foreign allies; of this total, eighty thousand were
Vulture Dragoons and twenty thousand Grassplumeriders, The Grassplume is also a very large bird, which
instead-of plumage is all shaggy with grass and has
wings very like lettuce-leaves. Next to these the
Millet-shooters and the Garlic-fighters were posted.
Endymion also had allies who came from the Great
Bear—thirty thousand Flea-archers and fifty thousand
Volplaneurs. The Flea-archers ride on great fleas,


 

from which they get their name; the fleas are as
large as twelve elephants. The Volplaneurs are
infantry, to be sure, but they fly in the air without
wings. As to the manner of their flight, they pull
their long tunics up through their girdles, let
the baggy folds fill with wind as if they were sails,
and are carried along like boats. For the most part
they serve as light infantry in battle. It was said, too,
that the stars over Cappadocia would send seventy
thousand Sparrowcorns and five thousand Crane
Dragoons. I did not get a look at them, as they did
not come, so I have not ventured to write about
their characteristics, for the stories about them were
wonderful and incredible.
 Compare the reticence of Herodotus (1, 193), Thucydides
(3, 113, 6), and Tacitus (Germ. 46). 

 


These were the forces of Endymion. They all
had the same equipment—helmets of beans (their
beans are large and tough); scale-corselets of
lupines (they sew together the skins of lupines to
make the corselets, and in that country the skin of
the lupine is unbreakable, like horn); shields
and swords of the Greek pattern.

 
When the time
came, they took position thus; on the right wing,
the Vulture Dragoons and the king, with the bravest
about him (we were among them); on the left, the
Grassplumes; in the centre, the allies, in whatever
formation they liked. The infantry came to about
sixty million, and was deployed as follows. Spiders
in that country are numerous and large, all of them
far larger than the Cyclades islands. They were



 

commissioned by the king to span the air between
the Moon and the Morning Star with a web, and as
soon as they had finished and had made a plain, he
deployed his infantry on it. Their leaders were
Owlett son of Fairweather, and two others.