Icaromenippus, an Aerial Expedition (1-2)

Let me see, now. First stage, Earth to Moon, 350 miles. Second stage, up to the Sun, 500 leagues. Then the third, to the actual Heaven and Zeus’s citadel, might be put at a day’s journey for an eagle in light marching order.

In the name of goodness, Menippus, what are these astronomical sums you are doing under your breath? I have

Ah, you must not be surprised if my talk is rather exalted and ethereal; I was making out the mileage of my journey.

Oh, I see; using stars to steer by, like the Phoenicians?

Oh no, travelling among them.

Well, to be sure, it must have been a longish dream, if you lost yourself in it for whole leagues.

Dream, my good man? I am just come straight from Zeus. Dream, indeed!

How? What? Our Menippus a literal godsend from Heaven?

Tis even so; from very Zeus I come this day, eyes and ears yet full of wonders. Oh, doubt, if you will. That my fortune should pass belief makes it only the more gratifying.

Nay, my worshipful Olympian, how should I, ‘a man begotten, treading this poor earth,’ doubt him who transcends the clouds, a ‘denizen of Heaven,’ as Homer says? But vouchsafe to tell me how you were uplifted, and where you got your mighty tall ladder. There is hardly enough of Ganymede in your looks to suggest that you were carried off by the eagle for a cupbearer.

I see you are bent on making a jest of it. Well, it is extraordinary; you could not be expected to see that it is not aromance. The fact is, I needed neither ladder nor amorous eagle; I had wings of my own.

Stranger and stranger! this beats Daedalus. What, you turned into a hawk or a crow on the sly?

Now that is not a bad shot; it was Daedalus’s wing trick that I tried.