Icaromenippus, or the Sky-man (6-10)

MENIPPUS Indeed, my friend, it will make you laugh to hear about the way they bragged and worked wonders in their talk! Why, in the first place, they-stood on the ground and were not a bit better than the rest of us who walk the earth; in fact, they were not even sharper sighted than their neighbours, but some of them were actually purblind through age or idleness. In spite of that, however, they claimed to discern the boundaries of Heaven, they measured

Moreover, was it not silly and completely absurd that when they were talking about things so uncertain they did not make a single assertion hypothetically but were vehement in their insistence and gave the rest no chance to outdo them in exaggeration; all but swearing that the sun is a mass of molten metal, that the moon is inhabited, and that the stars drink water, the sun drawing up the moisture from the sea with a rope and bucket, as it were, and distributing the beverage to all of them in order?

As for the contradictory nature of their theories, that is easy to appreciate. Just see for yourself, in Heaven’s name, whether their doctrines are akin and not widely divergent. First of all, there is their difference of opinion about the universe. Some

FRIEND They are very presumptuous charlatans by what you say, Menippus.

MENIPPUS But my dear man, what if I should tell you all they said about “ideas” and incorporeal entities, or their theories about the finite and the infinite? On the latter point also they had a childish dispute, some of them setting a limit to the universe and others considering it to be unlimited; nay more, they asserted that there are many worlds and censured those who talked as if there were but one. Another, not a man of peace, opined that war was the father of the universe.[*]

As for the gods, why speak of them at all, seeing that to some a number was god, while others swore by geese and dogs and plane-trees?[*] Moreover, some banished all the rest of the gods and assigned the governance of the universe to one only, so that it made me a little disgusted to hear that gods were so scarce. Others, however, lavishly declared them

When I heard all this, the result was that I did not venture to disbelieve “high-thundering” gentlemen with goodly beards, and yet did not know where to turn in order to find a point of doctrine that was unassailable and not in any way subject to refutation by someone else. So I went through just what Homer speaks of; again and again I was fain to believe one of them,

“but other counsel drew me back.