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

the sun, they visited the spheres beyond the moon, and you would have thought they had fallen from the stars from the way they told about their magnitudes and presumed to say just how many cubits it is in distance from the sun to the moon, often, perhaps, without even knowing how many furlongs it is from Megara to Athens. And not only did they measure the height of the air and the depth of the sea and the circumference of the earth, but by the description of circles and the construction of triangles on squares and of imultiple spheres they actually measured out the cubic content of the Heavens.[*]

MENIPPUS

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?

MENIPPUS

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

think it is without beginning and without end, but others have even ventured to tell who made it and how it was constructed; and these latter surprised me most, for they made some god or other the creator of the universe, but did not tell where he came from or where he stood when he created it all; and yet it is impossible to conceive of time and space before the genesis of the universe.

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.[*]

MENIPPUS

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

to be many and drew a distinction between them, calling one a first god and ascribing to others second and third rank in divinity. Furthermore, some thought that the godhead was without form and substance, while others defined it as body. Then too they did not all think that the gods exercise providence in our affairs; there were some who relieved them of every bit of responsibility as we are accustomed to relieve old men of public duties; indeed, the part that they give them to play is just like that of supers in comedy. A few went beyond all this and did not even believe that there were any gods at all, but left the world to wag on unruled and ungoverned.

MENIPPUS

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.

Od. 9, 302. At my wit’s end in view of all this, I despaired of hearing any truth about these matters on earth and thought that the only way out of my whole dilemma would be to get wings somehow and go up to Heaven. The wish was father to the thought, of course, but the story-teller Aesop had something to do with it also, for he makes Heaven accessible to eagles and beetles and now and then even to camels. Well, that I myself could ever grow wings was not in any way possible, I thought; butif L put on the wings of a vulture or an eagle (for no others would be large enough to uphold the weight of a man’s body), perhaps my attempt would succeed. So catching my birds, I carefully cut of the right wing of the eagle and the left wing of the vulture, tied them tightly together, fitted them to my shoulders with stout straps and made grips for my hands at the ends of the primary feathers. Then I first tried myself by jumping up and down, working my arms and doing as geese do—lifting myself along the ground and running on tiptoe as I flew. When the thing began to work well for me, I went in for the experiment with greater boldness. Going up to the acropolis, I let myself drop down the cliff right into the theatre.