No More Learning

Ah! I am robbed!

_Mi_. Whine away, Simon, and sit up of nights till you are as
yellow as the gold you clutch. --I should like to go to Gniphon the
usurer's next; it is quite close. . . . Again the door opens to us.

_Cock_. He is sitting up too, look. It is an anxious time with
him; he is reckoning his interest. His fingers are worn to the
bone. Presently he will have to leave all this, and become a
cockroach, or a gnat, or a bluebottle.

_Mi_. Senseless brute! it will hardly be a change for the
worse. He, like Simon, is pretty well thinned down by his
calculations. Let us try some one else.

_Cock_. What about your friend Eucrates? See, the door stands
open; let us go in.

_Mi_. An hour ago, all this was mine!

_Cock_. Still the golden dream! --Look at the hoary old
reprobate: with one of his own slaves!

_Mi_. Monstrous! And his wife is not much better; she takes
her paramour from the kitchen.

_Cock_. Well? Is the inheritance to your liking? Will you have
it all?

_Mi_. I will starve first. Good-bye to gold and high living.
Preserve me from my own servants, and I will call myself rich on
twopence-halfpenny.

_Cock_. Well, well, we must be getting home; see, it is just
dawn. The rest must wait for another day.




ICAROMENIPPUS, AN AERIAL EXPEDITION

_Menippus and a Friend_


_Me_. 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.

_Fr_. In the name of goodness, Menippus, what are these
astronomical sums you are doing under your breath? I have been
dogging yon for some time, listening to your suns and moons,
queerly mixed up with common earthly stages and leagues.

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

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

_Me_. Oh no, travelling among them.

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

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

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

_Me_. '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.

_Fr_. 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.

_Me_. 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 a romance. The fact is, I needed neither ladder nor amorous
eagle; I had wings of my own.

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

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

_Fr_. Well, talk of foolhardiness! did you like the idea of
falling into the sea, and giving us a _Mare Menippeum_ after
the precedent of the _Icarium_?

_Me_. No fear. Icarus's feathers were fastened with wax, and
of course, directly the sun warmed this, he moulted and fell. No
wax for me, thank you.

_Fr_. How did you manage, then? I declare I shall be believing
you soon, if you go on like this.

_Me_. Well, I caught a fine eagle, and also a particularly
powerful vulture, and cut off their wings above the shoulder-
joint. . . . But no; if you are not in a hurry, I may as well give you
the enterprise from the beginning.

_Fr_. Do, do; I am rapt aloft by your words already, my mouth
open for your _bonne bouche_; as you love me, leave me not in
those upper regions hung up by the ears!

_Me_. Listen, then; it would be a sorry sight, a friend
deserted, with his mouth open, and _sus. per aures_. --Well, a
very short survey of life had convinced me of the absurdity and
meanness and insecurity that pervade all human objects, such as
wealth, office, power. I was filled with contempt for them,
realized that to care for them was to lose all chance of what
deserved care, and determined to grovel no more, but fix my gaze
upon the great All. Here I found my first problem in what wise men
call the universal order; I could not tell how it came into being,
who made it, what was its beginning, or what its end. But my next
step, which was the examination of details, landed me in yet worse
perplexity. I found the stars dotted quite casually about the sky,
and I wanted to know what the sun was. Especially the phenomena of
the moon struck me as extraordinary, and quite passed my
comprehension; there must be some mystery to account for those many
phases, I conjectured. Nor could I feel any greater certainty about
such things as the passage of lightning, the roll of thunder, the
descent of rain and snow and hail.

In this state of mind, the best I could think of was to get at the
truth of it all from the people called philosophers; they of course
would be able to give it me. So I selected the best of them, if
solemnity of visage, pallor of complexion and length of beard are
any criterion--for there could not be a moment's doubt of their
soaring words and heaven-high thoughts--and in their hands I placed
myself. For a considerable sum down, and more to be paid when they
should have perfected me in wisdom, I was to be made an airy
metaphysician and instructed in the order of the universe.
Unfortunately, so far from dispelling my previous ignorance, they
perplexed me more and more, with their daily drenches of beginnings
and ends, atoms and voids, matters and forms. My greatest
difficulty was that, though they differed among themselves, and all
they said was full of inconsistency and contradiction, they
expected me to believe them, each pulling me in his own direction.

_Fr_. How absurd that wise men should quarrel about facts, and
hold different opinions on the same things!

_Me_. Ah, but keep your laughter till you have heard something
of their pretentious mystifications. To begin with, their feet are
on the ground; they are no taller than the rest of us 'men that
walk the earth'; they are no sharper-sighted than their neighbours,
some of them purblind, indeed, with age or indolence; and yet they
say they can distinguish the limits of the sky, they measure the
sun's circumference, take their walks in the supra-lunar regions,
and specify the sizes and shapes of the stars as though they had
fallen from them; often one of them could not tell you correctly
the number of miles from Megara to Athens, but has no hesitation
about the distance in feet from the sun to the moon. How high the
atmosphere is, how deep the sea, how far it is round the earth--
they have the figures for all that; and moreover, they have only to
draw some circles, arrange a few triangles and squares, add certain
complicated spheres, and lo, they have the cubic contents of
Heaven.

Then, how reasonable and modest of them, dealing with subjects so
debatable, to issue their views without a hint of uncertainty; thus
it must be and it shall be; _contra gentes_ they will have it
so; they will tell you on oath the sun is a molten mass, the moon
inhabited, and the stars water-drinkers, moisture being drawn up by
the sun's rope and bucket and equitably distributed among them.

How their theories conflict is soon apparent; next-door neighbours?
no, they are miles apart. In the first place, their views of the
world differ. Some say it had no beginning, and cannot end; others
boldly talk of its creator and his procedure; what particularly
entertained me was that these latter set up a contriver of the
universe, but fail to mention where he came from, or what he stood
on while about his elaborate task, though it is by no means obvious
how there could be place or time before the universe came into
being.

_Fr_. You really do make them out very audacious conjurers.

_Me_. My dear fellow, I wish I could give you their lucubrations on
ideas and incorporeals, on finite and infinite. Over that point,
now, there is fierce battle; some circumscribe the All, others will
have it unlimited. At the same time they declare for a plurality of
worlds, and speak scornfully of others who make only one. And there
is a bellicose person who maintains that war is the father of the
universe. [Footnote: Variously attributed to Heraclitus, who denies
the possibility of repose, and insists that all things are in a
state of flux; and to Empedocles, who makes all change and becoming
depend on the interaction of the two principles, attraction and
repulsion. ]

As to Gods, I need hardly deal with that question. For some of them
God is a number; some swear by dogs and geese and plane-trees.
[Footnote: Socrates made a practice of substituting these for the
names of Gods in his oaths. ] Some again banish all other Gods, and
attribute the control of the universe to a single one; I got rather
depressed on learning how small the supply of divinity was. But I
was comforted by the lavish souls who not only make many, but
classify; there was a First God, and second and third classes of
divinity. Yet again, some regard the divine nature as unsubstantial
and without form, while others conceive it as a substance. Then
they were not all disposed to recognize a Providence; some relieve
the Gods of all care, as we relieve the superannuated of their
civic duties; in fact, they treat them exactly like supernumeraries
on the stage. The last step is also taken, of saying that Gods do
not exist at all, and leaving the world to drift along without a
master or a guiding hand.

Well, when I heard all this, I dared not disbelieve people whose
voices and beards were equally suggestive of Zeus. But I knew not
where to turn for a theory that was not open to exception, nor
combated by one as soon as propounded by another. I found myself in
the state Homer has described; many a time I would vigorously start
believing one of these gentlemen;

But then came second thoughts.

So in my distress I began to despair of ever getting any knowledge
about these things on earth; the only possible escape from
perplexity would be to take to myself wings and go up to Heaven.
Partly the wish was father to the thought; but it was confirmed by
Aesop's Fables, from which it appears that Heaven is accessible to
eagles, beetles, and sometimes camels. It was pretty clear that I
could not possibly develop feathers of my own. But if I were to
wear vulture's or eagle's wings--the only kinds equal to a man's
weight--I might perhaps succeed. I caught the birds, and
effectually amputated the eagle's right, and the vulture's left
wing. These I fastened together, attached them to my shoulders with
broad thick straps, and provided grips for my hands near the end of
the quill-feathers. Then I made experiments, first jumping up and
helping the jump by flapping my hands, or imitating the way a goose
raises itself without leaving the ground and combines running with
flight. Finding the machine obedient, I next made a bolder venture,
went up the Acropolis, and launched myself from the cliff right
over the theatre.

Getting safely to the bottom that time, my aspirations shot up
aloft. I took to starting from Parnes or Hymettus, flying to
Geranea, thence to the top of the Acrocorinthus, and over Pholoe
and Erymanthus to Taygetus. The training for my venture was now
complete; my powers were developed, and equal to a lofty flight; no
more fledgeling essays for me. I went up Olympus, provisioning
myself as lightly as possible. The moment was come; I soared
skywards, giddy at first with that great void below, but soon
conquering this difficulty. When I approached the Moon, long after
parting from the clouds, I was conscious of fatigue, especially in
the left or vulture's wing. So I alighted and sat down to rest,
having a bird's-eye view of the Earth, like the Homeric Zeus,

Surveying now the Thracian horsemen's land,
Now Mysia,

and again, as the fancy took me, Greece or Persia or India. From
all which I drew a manifold delight.

_Fr_. Oh well, Menippus, tell me all about it. I do not want
to miss a single one of your travel experiences; if you picked up
any stray information, let me have that too. I promise myself a
great many facts about the shape of the Earth, and how everything
on it looked to you from your point of vantage.

_Me_. And you will not be disappointed there, friend. So do
your best to get up to the Moon, with my story for travelling
companion and showman of the terrestrial scene.

Imagine yourself first descrying a tiny Earth, far smaller than the
Moon looks; on turning my eyes down, I could not think for some
time what had become of our mighty mountains and vast sea. If I had
not caught sight of the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharus tower, I
assure you I should never have made out the Earth at all. But their
height and projection, with the faint shimmer of Ocean in the sun,
showed me it must be the Earth I was looking at. Then, when once I
had got my sight properly focused, the whole human race was clear
to me, not merely in the shape of nations and cities, but the
individuals, sailing, fighting, ploughing, going to law; the women,
the beasts, and in short every breed 'that feedeth on earth's
foison. '

_Fr_. Most unconvincing and contradictory. Just now you were
searching for the Earth, it was so diminished by distance, and if
the Colossus had not betrayed it, you would have taken it for
something else; and now you develop suddenly into a Lynceus, and
distinguish everything upon it, the men, the beasts, one might
almost say the gnat-swarms. Explain, please.

_Me_. Why, to be sure! how did I come to leave out so essential a
particular? I had made out the Earth, you see, but could not
distinguish any details; the distance was so great, quite beyond
the scope of my vision; so I was much chagrined and baffled. At
this moment of depression--I was very near tears--who should come
up behind me but Empedocles the physicist? His complexion was like
charcoal variegated with ashes, as if he had been baked. I will not
deny that I felt some tremors at the sight of him, taking him for
some lunar spirit. But he said: 'Do not be afraid, Menippus;

A mortal I, no God; how vain thy dreams.

I am Empedocles the physicist. When I threw myself into the crater
in such a hurry, the smoke of Etna whirled me off up here; and now
I live in the Moon, doing a good deal of high thinking on a diet of
dew. So I have come to help you out of your difficulty; you are
distressed, I take it, at not being able to see everything on the
Earth. ' 'Thank you so much, you good Empedocles,' I said; 'as soon
as my wings have brought me back to Greece, I will remember to pour
libations to you up the chimney, and salute you on the first of
every month with three moonward yawns. ' 'Endymion be my witness,'
he replied, 'I had no thought of such a bargain; I was touched by
the sight of your distress. Now, what do you think is the way to
sharpen your sight? '

'I have no idea, unless you were to remove the mist from my eyes
for me; the sight seems quite bleared. ' 'Oh, you can do without me;
the thing that gives sharp sight you have brought with you from
Earth. ' 'Unconsciously, then; what is it? ' 'Why, you know that you
have on an eagle's right wing? ' 'Of course I do; but what have
wings and eyes to do with one another? ' 'Only this,' he said; 'the
eagle is far the strongest-eyed of all living things, the only one
that can look straight at the sun; the test of the true royal eagle
is, his meeting its rays without blinking. ' 'So I have heard; I
wish I had taken out my own eyes when I was starting, and
substituted the eagle's. I am an imperfect specimen now I am here,
not up to the royal standard at all, but like the rejected
bastards. ' 'Well, you can very soon acquire one royal eye.
If you
will stand up for a minute, keep the vulture wing still, and work
the other, your right eye, corresponding to that wing, will gain
strength. As for the other, its dimness cannot possibly be
obviated, as it belongs to the inferior member. ' 'Oh, I shall be
quite content with aquiline vision for the right eye only,' I said;
'I have often observed that carpenters in ruling their wood find
one better than two. ' So saying, I proceeded to carry out my
instructions at once. Empedocles began gradually to disappear, and
at last vanished in smoke.

I had no sooner flapped the wing than a flood of light enveloped
me, and things that before I had not even been aware of became
perfectly clear. I turned my eyes down earthwards, and with ease
discerned cities, men, and all that was going on, not merely in the
open, but in the fancied security of houses. There was Ptolemy in
his sister's arms, the son of Lysimachus plotting against his
father, Seleucus's son Antiochus making signs to his step-mother
Stratonice, Alexander of Pherae being murdered by his wife,
Antigonus corrupting his daughter-in-law, the son of Attalus
putting the poison in his cup; Arsaces was in the act of slaying
his mistress, while the eunuch Arbaces drew his sword upon him; the
guards were dragging Spatinus the Mede out from the banquet by the
foot, with the lump on his brow from the golden cup. Similar sights
were to be seen in the palaces of Libya and Scythia and Thrace--
adulteries, murders, treasons, robberies, perjuries, suspicions,
and monstrous betrayals.

Such was the entertainment afforded me by royalty; private life was
much more amusing; for I could make that out too. I saw Hermodorus
the Epicurean perjuring himself for 40 pounds, Agathocles the Stoic
suing a pupil for his fees, lawyer Clinias stealing a bowl from the
temple of Asclepius, and Herophilus the cynic sleeping in a
brothel. Not to mention the multitude of burglars, litigants,
usurers, duns; oh, it was a fine representative show!

_Fr_. I must say, Menippus, I should have liked the details
here too; it all seems to have been very much to your taste.

_Me_. I could not go through the whole of it, even to please
you; to take it in with the eyes kept one busy. But the main
divisions were very much what Homer gives from the shield of
Achilles: here junketings and marriages, there courts and councils,
in another compartment a sacrifice, and hard by a mourning. If I
glanced at Getica, I would see the Getae at war; at Scythia, there
were the Scythians wandering about on their waggons; half a turn in
another direction gave me Egyptians at the plough, or Phoenicians
chaffering, Cilician pirates, Spartan flagellants, Athenians at
law.

All this was simultaneous, you understand; and you must try to
conceive what a queer jumble it all made. It was as if a man were
to collect a number of choristers, or rather of choruses,
[Footnote: The Greek chorus combined singing with dancing. ] and
then tell each individual to disregard the others and start a
strain of his own; if each did his best, went his own way, and
tried to drown his neighbour, can you imagine what the musical
effect would be?

_Fr_. A very ridiculous confusion.

_Me_. Well, friend, such are the earthly dancers; the life of
man is just such a discordant performance; not only are the voices
jangled, but the steps are not uniform, the motions not concerted,
the objects not agreed upon--until the impresario dismisses them
one by one from the stage, with a 'not wanted. ' Then they are all
alike, and quiet enough, confounding no longer their undisciplined
rival strains. But as long as the show lasts in its marvellous
diversity, there is plenty of food for laughter in its vagaries.

The people who most amused me, however, were those who dispute
about boundaries, or pride themselves on cultivating the plain of
Sicyon, or holding the Oenoe side of Marathon, or a thousand acres
at Acharnae. The whole of Greece, as I then saw it, might measure
some four inches; how much smaller Athens on the same scale. So I
realized what sort of sized basis for their pride remains to our
rich men. The widest-acred of them all, methought, was the proud
cultivator of an Epicurean atom. Then I looked at the Peloponnese,
my eyes fell on the Cynurian district, and the thought occurred
that it was for this little plot, no broader than an Egyptian
lentil, that all those Argives and Spartans fell in a single day.
Or if I saw a man puffed up by the possession of seven or eight
gold rings and half as many gold cups, again my lungs would begin
to crow; why, Pangaeus with all its mines was about the size of a
grain of millet.

_Fr_. You lucky man! what a rare sight you had! And how big,
now, did the towns and the people look from there?

_Me_. You must often have seen a community of ants, some of
them a seething mass, some going abroad, others coming back to
town. One is a scavenger, another a bustling porter loaded with a
bit of bean-pod or half a wheat grain. They no doubt have, on their
modest myrmecic scale, their architects and politicians, their
magistrates and composers and philosophers. At any rate, what men
and cities suggested to me was just so many ant-hills. If you think
the similitude too disparaging, look into the Thessalian legends,
and you will find that the most warlike tribe there was the
Myrmidons, or ants turned men. Well, when I had had enough of
contemplation and laughter, I roused myself and soared

To join the Gods, where dwells the Lord of storms.

I had only flown a couple of hundred yards, when Selene's feminine
voice reached me: 'Menippus, do me an errand to Zeus, and I will
wish you a pleasant journey. ' 'You have only to name it,' I said,
'provided it is not something to carry. ' 'It is a simple message of
entreaty to Zeus. I am tired to death, you must know, of being
slandered by these philosophers; they have no better occupation
than impertinent curiosity about me--What am I? how big am I? why
am I halved? why am I gibbous? I am inhabited; I am just a mirror
hung over the sea; I am--whatever their latest fancy suggests. It
is the last straw when they say my light is stolen, sham, imported
from the sun, and keep on doing their best to get up jealousy and
ill feeling between brother and sister. They might have been
contented with making _him_ out a stone or a red-hot lump.

'These gentry who in the day look so stern and manly, dress so
gravely, and are so revered by common men, would be surprised to
learn how much I know of their vile nightly abominations. I see
them all, though I never tell; it would be too indecent to make
revelations, and show up the contrast between their nightly doings
and their public performances; so, if I catch one of them in
adultery or theft or other nocturnal adventure, I pull my cloud
veil over me; I do not want the vulgar to see old men disgracing
their long beards and their virtuous calling. But they go on giving
tongue and worrying me all the same, and, so help me Night, I have
thought many a time of going a long, long way off, out of reach of
their impertinent tongues. Will you remember to tell Zeus all this?
and you may add that I cannot remain at my post unless he will
pulverize the physicists, muzzle the logicians, raze the Porch,
burn the Academy, and put an end to strolling in the Lyceum. That
might secure me a little peace from these daily mensurations. '

'I will remember,' said I, and resumed my upward flight to Heaven,
through

A region where nor ox nor man had wrought.

For the Moon was soon but a small object, with the Earth entirely
hidden behind it. Three days' flight through the stars, with the
Sun on my right hand, brought me close to Heaven; and my first idea
was to go straight in as I was; I should easily pass unobserved in
virtue of my half-eagleship; for of course the eagle was Zeus's
familiar; on second thoughts, though, my vulture wing would very
soon betray me. So, thinking it better not to run any risks, I went
up to the door and knocked. Hermes opened, took my name, and
hurried off to inform Zeus. After a brief wait I was asked to step
in; I was now trembling with apprehension, and I found that the
Gods, who were all seated together, were not quite easy themselves.
The unexpected nature of the visit was slightly disturbing to them,
and they had visions of all mankind arriving at my heels by the
same conveyance.

But Zeus bent upon me a Titanic glance, awful, penetrating, and
spoke:

Who art thou? where thy city? who thy kin?

At the sound, I nearly died of fear, but remained upright, though
mute and paralysed by that thunderous voice. I gradually recovered,
began at the beginning, and gave a clear account of myself--how I
had been possessed with curiosity about the heavens, had gone to
the philosophers, found their accounts conflicting, and grown tired
of being logically rent in twain; so I came to my great idea, my
wings, and ultimately to Heaven; I added Selene's message. Zeus
smiled and slightly unbent his brow. 'What of Otus and Ephialtes
now? ' he said; 'here is Menippus scaling Heaven! Well, well, for
to-day consider yourself our guest. To-morrow we will treat with
you of your business, and send you on your way. ' And therewith he
rose and walked to the acoustic centre of Heaven, it being prayer
time.

As he went, he put questions to me about earthly affairs, beginning
with, What was wheat a quarter in Greece? had we suffered much from
cold last winter? and did the vegetables want more rain? Then he
wished to know whether any of Phidias's kin were alive, why there
had been no Diasia at Athens all these years, whether his Olympieum
was ever going to be completed, and had the robbers of his temple
at Dodona been caught? I answered all these questions, and he
proceeded:--'Tell me, Menippus, what are men's feelings towards
me? ' 'What should they be, Lord, but those of absolute reverence,
as to the King of all Gods? ' 'Now, now, chaffing as usual,' he
said; 'I know their fickleness very well, for all your dissimulation.
There was a time when I was their prophet, their healer, and their
all,

And Zeus filled every street and gathering-place.

In those days Dodona and Pisa were glorious and far-famed, and I
could not get a view for the clouds of sacrificial steam. But now
Apollo has set up his oracle at Delphi, Asclepius his temple of
health at Pergamum, Bendis and Anubis and Artemis their shrines in
Thrace, Egypt, Ephesus; and to these all run; theirs the festal
gatherings and the hecatombs. As for me, I am superannuated; they
think themselves very generous if they offer me a victim at Olympia
at four-year intervals. My altars are cold as Plato's _Laws_
or Chrysippus's _Syllogisms_. '

So talking, we reached the spot where he was to sit and listen to
the prayers. There was a row of openings with lids like well-
covers, and a chair of gold by each. Zeus took his seat at the
first, lifted off the lid and inclined his ear. From every quarter
of Earth were coming the most various and contradictory petitions;
for I too bent down my head and listened. Here are specimens. 'O
Zeus, that I might be king! ' 'O Zeus, that my onions and garlic
might thrive! ' 'Ye Gods, a speedy death for my father! ' Or again,
'Would that I might succeed to my wife's property! ' 'Grant that my
plot against my brother be not detected. ' 'Let me win my suit. '
'Give me an Olympic garland. ' Of those at sea, one prayed for a
north, another for a south wind; the farmer asked for rain, the
fuller for sun. Zeus listened, and gave each prayer careful
consideration, but without promising to grant them all;

Our Father this bestowed, and that withheld.

Righteous prayers he allowed to come up through the hole, received
and laid them down at his right, while he sent the unholy ones
packing with a downward puff of breath, that Heaven might not be
defiled by their entrance. In one case I saw him puzzled; two men
praying for opposite things and promising the same sacrifices, he
could not tell which of them to favour, and experienced a truly
Academic suspense of judgement, showing a reserve and equilibrium
worthy of Pyrrho himself.

The prayers disposed of, he went on to the next chair and opening,
and attended to oaths and their takers. These done with, and
Hermodorus the Epicurean annihilated, he proceeded to the next
chair to deal with omens, prophetic voices, and auguries. Then came
the turn of the sacrifice aperture, through which the smoke came up
and communicated to Zeus the name of the devotee it represented.
After that, he was free to give his wind and weather orders:--Rain
for Scythia to-day, a thunderstorm for Libya, snow for Greece. The
north wind he instructed to blow in Lydia, the west to raise a
storm in the Adriatic, the south to take a rest; a thousand bushels
of hail to be distributed over Cappadocia.

His work was now pretty well completed, and as it was just dinner
time, we went to the banquet hall. Hermes received me, and gave me
my place next to a group of Gods whose alien origin left them in a
rather doubtful position--Pan, the Corybants, Attis, and Sabazius.
I was supplied with bread by Demeter, wine by Dionysus, meat by
Heracles, myrtle-blossoms by Aphrodite, and sprats by Posidon. But
I also got a sly taste of ambrosia and nectar; good-natured
Ganymede, as often as he saw that Zeus's attention was engaged
elsewhere, brought round the nectar and indulged me with a half-
pint or so. The Gods, as Homer (who I think must have had the same
opportunities of observation as myself) somewhere says, neither eat
bread nor drink the ruddy wine; they heap their plates with
ambrosia, and are nectar-bibbers; but their choicest dainties are
the smoke of sacrifice ascending with rich fumes, and the blood of
victims poured by their worshippers round the altars. During
dinner, Apollo harped, Silenus danced his wild measures, the Muses
uprose and sang to us from Hesiod's _Birth of Gods_, and the
first of Pindar's odes. When we had our fill and had well drunken,
we slumbered, each where he was.

Slept all the Gods, and men with plumed helms,
That livelong night; but me kind sleep forsook;

for I had much upon my mind; most of all, how came it that Apollo,
in all that time, had never grown a beard? and how was night
possible in Heaven, with the sun always there taking his share of
the good cheer? So I had but a short nap of it. And in the morning
Zeus arose, and bade summon an assembly.

When all were gathered, he thus commenced:--'The immediate occasion
of my summoning you is the arrival of this stranger yesterday. But
I have long intended to take counsel with you regarding the
philosophers, and now, urged by Selene and her complaints, I have
determined to defer the consideration of the question no longer.
There is a class which has recently become conspicuous among men;
they are idle, quarrelsome, vain, irritable, lickerish, silly,
puffed up, arrogant, and, in Homeric phrase, vain cumberers of the
earth. These men have divided themselves into bands, each dwelling
in a separate word-maze of its own construction, and call
themselves Stoics, Epicureans, Peripatetics, and more farcical
names yet. Then they take to themselves the holy name of Virtue,
and with uplifted brows and flowing beards exhibit the deceitful
semblance that hides immoral lives; their model is the tragic
actor, from whom if you strip off the mask and the gold-spangled
robe, there is nothing left but a paltry fellow hired for a few
shillings to play a part.

'Nevertheless, quite undeterred by their own characters, they scorn
the human and travesty the divine; they gather a company of
guileless youths, and feed them with solemn chatter upon Virtue and
quibbling verbal puzzles; in their pupils' presence they are all
for fortitude and temperance, and have no words bad enough for
wealth and pleasure: when they are by themselves, there is no limit
to their gluttony, their lechery, their licking of dirty pence. But
the head and front of their offending is this: they neither work
themselves nor help others' work; they are useless drones,

Of no avail in council nor in war;

which notwithstanding, they censure others; they store up poisoned
words, they con invectives, they heap their neighbours with
reproaches; their highest honours are for him who shall be loudest
and most overbearing and boldest in abuse.

'Ask one of these brawling bawling censors, And what do _you_
do? in God's name, what shall we call _your_ contribution to
progress? and he would reply, if conscience and truth were anything
to him: I consider it superfluous to sail the sea or till the earth
or fight for my country or follow a trade; but I have a loud voice
and a dirty body; I eschew warm water and go barefoot through the
winter; I am a Momus who can always pick holes in other people's
coats; if a rich man keeps a costly table or a mistress, I make it
my business to be properly horrified; but if my familiar friend is
lying sick, in need of help and care, I am not aware of it. Such,
your Godheads, is the nature of this vermin.

'There is a special insolence in those who call themselves
Epicureans; these go so far as to lay their hands on our character;
we take no interest in human affairs, they say, and in fact have
nothing to do with the course of events. And this is a serious
question for you; if once they infect their generation with this
view, you will learn what hunger means. Who will sacrifice to you,
if he does not expect to profit by it? As to Selene's complaints,
you all heard them yesterday from this stranger's lips. And now
decide upon such measures as shall advantage mankind and secure
your own safety. '

Zeus had no sooner closed his speech than clamour prevailed, all
crying at once: Blast! burn! annihilate! to the pit with them! to
Tartarus! to the Giants! Zeus ordered silence again, and then,
'Your wishes,' he said, 'shall be executed; they shall all be
annihilated, and their logic with them. But just at present
chastisement is not lawful; you are aware that we are now in the
four months of the long vacation; the formal notice has lately been
issued. In the spring of next year, the baleful levin-bolt shall
give them the fate they deserve. '

He spake, and sealed his word with lowering brows.

'As to Menippus,' he added, 'my pleasure is this. He shall be
deprived of his wings, and so incapacitated for repeating his
visit, but shall to-day be conveyed back to Earth by Hermes. ' So
saying, he dismissed the assembly. The Cyllenian accordingly lifted
me up by the right ear, and yesterday evening deposited me in the
Ceramicus. And now, friend, you have all the latest from Heaven. I
must be off to the Poecile, to let the philosophers loitering there
know the luck they are in.




THE DOUBLE INDICTMENT


_Zeus. Hermes. Justice. Pan. Several Athenians. The Academy. The
Porch. Epicurus. Virtue. Luxury. Diogenes. Rhetoric. A Syrian.
Dialogue_


_Zeus_. A curse on all those philosophers who will have it
that none but the Gods are happy! If they could but know what we
have to put up with on men's account, they would not envy us our
nectar and our ambrosia. They take Homer's word for it all,--the
word of a blind quack; 'tis he who pronounces us blessed, and
expatiates on heavenly glories, he who could not see in front of
his own nose. Look at the Sun, now. He yokes that chariot, and is
riding through the heavens from morn till night, clothed in his
garment of fire, and dispensing his rays abroad; not so much
breathing-space as goes to the scratching of an ear; once let his
horses catch him napping, and they have the bit between their teeth
and are off 'cross country, with the result that the Earth is
scorched to a cinder. The Moon is no better off: she is kept up
into the small hours to light the reveller and the diner-out upon
their homeward path. And then Apollo,--_he_ has his work cut
out for him: with such a press of oracular business, it is much if
he has any ears left to hear with: he is wanted at Delphi; the next
minute, he must be off to Colophon; then away to Xanthus; then back
at a trot to Clarus; then it is Delos, then Branchidae;--in short,
he is at the beck of every priestess who has taken her draught of
holy water, munched her laurel-leaf, and made the tripod rock; it
is now or never; if he is not there that minute to reel off the
required oracle, his credit is gone. The traps they set for him
too! He must have a dog's nose for lamb and tortoise in the pot, or
his Lydian customer [Footnote: See _Croesus_ in Notes. ] departs,
laughing him to scorn. As for Asclepius, he has no peace for his
patients: his eyes are acquainted with horror, and his hands with
loathsomeness; another's sickness is his pain. To say nothing of
the work that the Winds have to get through, what with sowing and
winnowing and getting the ships along; or of Sleep, always on the
wing, with Dream at his side all night giving a helping hand. Men
have to thank us for all this: every one of us contributes his
share to their well-being. And the others have an easy time of it,
compared to me, to me the King and Father of all. The annoyances I
have to put up with! the worry of thinking of all these things at
once! I must keep an eye on all the rest, to begin with, or they
would be making some silly mistake; and as for the work I have to
do with my own hands, there is no end to it; such complications! it
is all I can do to get through with it. It is not as if I had only
the main issues to attend to, the rain and hail and wind and
lightning, and as soon as I had arranged them could sit down,
feeling that my own particular work was over: no, besides all that,
I must be looking every way at once, Argus-eyed for theft and
perjury, as for sacrifice; the moment a libation has been poured,
it is for me to locate the savoury smoke that rises; for me it is
to hear the cry of the sick man and of the sailor; at one and the
same moment, a hecatomb demands my presence at Olympia, a battle in
the plain of Babylon; hail is due in Thrace, dinner in Ethiopia;
'tis too much! And do what I may, it is hard to give satisfaction.
Many is the time that all besides, both Gods and men of plumed
helm, have slept the long night through, while unto Zeus sweet
slumber has not come nigh. If I nod for a moment, behold, Epicurus
is justified, and our indifference to the affairs of Earth made
manifest; and if once men lend an ear to that doctrine, the
consequences will be serious: our temples will go ungarlanded; the
streets will be redolent no longer of roast meat, the bowl no
longer yield us libation; our altars will be cold, sacrifice and
oblation will be at an end, and utter starvation must ensue. Hence
like a pilot I stand up at the helm all alone, tiller in hand,
while every soul on board is asleep, and probably drunk; no rest,
no food for me, while I ponder in my mind and breast on the common
safety; and my reward? to be called the Lord of all! I should like
to ask those philosophers who assign us the monopoly of
blessedness, when they suppose we find time for nectar and ambrosia
among our ceaseless occupations. Look at the mildewed, cob-webbed
stack of petitions mouldering on their files in our chancery, for
want of time to attend to them: look only at the cases pending
between men and the various Arts and Sciences; venerable relics,
some of them! Angry protests against the delays of the law reach me
from all quarters; men cannot understand that it is from no neglect
of ours that these judgements have been postponed; it is simply
pressure of business--pressure of blessedness, if they will have it
so.

_Her_. I myself, father, have heard a great deal of dissatisfaction
expressed on Earth, only I did not like to mention it to you.
However, as you have introduced the subject yourself, I may say
that the discontent is general: men do not venture to express their
resentment openly, but there are mutterings in corners about the
delay. It is high time they were all put out of their suspense, for
better or for worse.

_Zeus_. And what would you have me do, my boy?