Icaromenippus, or the Sky-man (1-5)

MENIPPUS It was three thousand furlongs, then, from the earth to the moon, my first stage; and from there up to the sun perhaps five hundred leagues; and from the sun to Heaven itself and the citadel of Zeus would be also a day’s ascent for an eagle travelling light.

FRIEND In the name of the Liberal Arts, Menippus, why are you playing astronomer and surveyor on the quiet like that? For a long time I have been following you about and listening to your outlandish talk about suns and moons and even those outworn topics, stages and leagues.

MENIPPUS Don’t be surprised, my friend, if my talk seems to you to be.up in the air and flighty; I am just figuring up the total length of my recent journey.

FRIEND So you did like the Phoenicians, old chap, and guessed your way by the stars

MENIPPUS No indeed, I made my journey right among the stars,

MENIPPUS Dream, man! Do you think I’m telling you a dream? [am just back from a visit to Zeus.

FRIEND What’s that you say? Menippus here from Heaven, dropt from the clouds ?

MENIPPUS Here I an, I tell you, just come back to-day from the very presence of your great Zeus himself, and I have seen and heard wonderful things. If you don’t believe me, I am overjoyed precisely because my good luck is beyond belief,

FRIEND Why, my divine Menippus, my Olympian Menippus, how can a mortal groundling like myself disbelieve a sky-man—in fact, to use the words of Homer, a son of Heaven?[*] But tell ine, please, how you were carried aloft, and where you got so long a ladder ; for as far as looks go you are too little like the lad of Phrygia for us to suppose that, like hii, you were snatched up by the eagle to become a cupbearer.[*]

MENIPPUS You have clearly been making fun of me this long time, and it is no wonder you think that my strange story is like a fairy-tale. However, I had no need of your ladder; for my ascent, nor yet to become the eagle’s pet, for I had wings of my own.

MENIPPUS Your guess is well-aimed, my friend, and hits the bull’s-eye ; for I myself constructed wings, patterned after Daedalus’ clever invention.

FRIEND Of all the foolhardy men in the world! Then you weren’t afraid you would fall into the water somewhere and give us a Menippean Sea named after yourself, to match the Icarian ?

MENIPPUS Not at all; Icarus had his feathers fitted on with wax, and so just as soon as that melted in the sun he shed his plumage, of course, and fell down ; but my wings were innocent of wax.

FRIEND What do you mean? For by now, sofhehow or other, you are gradually inclining me to believe in the truth of your story.

MENIPPUS This is what I mean; taking a good large eagle and also a strong vulture and cutting off their wings, joints and all—but I'll tell you the whole scheme from first to last, if you have time.

FRIEND By all means; here I am in suspense, thanks to what you have said, and already waiting with open mouth for the end of your tale. In the name of Friendship, don’t leave me hanging by the ears somewhere in the midst of the story.

MENIPPUS Listen then, for a friend left in the lurch with his mouth open would be anything but a pretty spectacle, especially if he were hanging by the ears, as you say you are. As soon as I began to find, in the course of my investigation of life, that all objects of human endeavour are ridiculous and trivial and insecure (wealth, I mean, and office and sovereign power), contemning those things and assuming that the effort to get them was an obstacle to getting things truly worth effort, I undertook to lift my eyes and contemplate the universe. In so doing I was caused great perplexity, first of all by what the philosophers call the Cosmos, for I could not discover how it came into being or who made it, or its source or purpose. Then in examining it part by part I was compelled to rack my brains still more, for I saw the stars scattered hap-hazard about the sky, and I wanted to know what the sun itself could be. Above all, the peculiarities of the moon seemed to me extraordinary and completely paradoxical, and I conjectured that her multiplicity of shapes had some hidden reason. More than that, lightning flashing and thunder crashing and rain or snow or hail driving down were all hard to interpret and impossible to reason out.

Being in that state of mind, I thought it best to learn about all these points from the philosophers, for I supposed that they surely would be able to tell the whole truth.” So I picked out the best of them, as far as I could judge from their dourness of visage,

FRIEND Extraordinary that learned men quarrelled with each other about their doctrines and did not hold the same views about the same things !