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,

FRIEND

Great Heracles! That's a long dream you are talking of, if you actually lost yourself and slept for leagues and leagues!

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.

FRIEND

You have improved on Daedalus, by what you say, if over and above all else, you have turned from a man to a hawk or a crow without our knowing it.

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.

MENIPPUS

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,

paleness of complexion and length of beard; and as the gentlemen at once struck me as being extremely tall talkers and high thinkers, I put myself i in their hands, paying down part of a good round sum on the spot and contracting to pay the balance later, on completion of my course in philosophy; and then I expected to be taught how to hold forth on the Heavens and to learn the system of the universe. But they were so far from ridding me of my old-time ignorance that they plunged me forthwith into even greater perplexities by flooding me every day with first causes, final causes, atoms, voids, elements, concepts, and all that sort of thing. But the hardest part of it all, in my opinion at least, was that although no one of them agreed with anyone else in anything he said, but all their statements were contradictory and inconsistent, they nevertheless expected to persuade me and each tried to win me over to his own doctrine.

FRIEND

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