» Lucian’s True History
by Lucian of Samosata
Translations by Francis Hickes and A. M. Harmon

Translation by Francis Hickes first published 1634
Introduction by Charles Wibley first published 1894
Translation by A. M. Harmon first published 1913


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» About the Author

Lucian of Samosata, born around 125 CE was a prolific and highly popular satirical author, who made fun of superstition, of those who told fantastic tales claiming them to be true, and of those who believed in them. He was critical of religion and often ridiculed well known philosophers and writers. Of the more than 80 works that are attributed to him, his _True History_ has remained the most influential and popular, often called the first work of science fiction (actually, it could rather be called fantasy than science fiction, though this is a modern distinction) -- while it draws on the works it parodies, it is indeed the first work that openly declares its fantastic content to be entirely made up. The _Introduction_ by Charles Whibley (page 10ff) gives an account of Lucian’s works and their influence on later writers, even if in 1894 he could not know how the sci-fi and fantasy genres would proliferate in the 20th and 21st century, still, at least indirectly, indebted to Lucian’s _True History_.
Samosata, where Lucian was born, on the banks of the Euphrates, near today’s city of Samsat in Turkey, was at that time part of the Roman province of Syria. Lucian called himself a Syrian, which was not in conflict with him being a Roman citizen, and having Greek as his native language. Little is known about his life, and what we do know we only now from his own writings, which may not be entirely reliable sources. He studied rhetoric and Greek literature in Ionia, visited universities throughout the Roman Empire as a travelling lecturer, gained some wealth and fame through his teachings, and settled in Athens for ten years, where he wrote most of his known works. In his fifties he may have been appointed a government official in Egypt. Since he mentioned the apotheosis of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who died in 180, we know that he was still alive at this time, but no further information about his life or his death have come down to us.
Francis Hickes was born 1566 in Worcestershire, matriculated at St. Mary Hall, Oxford, at the age of thirteen, graduated with a B.A. at the age of 17, retired into the country, engaged himself in translating from the Greek, and died in Gloucestershire at the house of a kinsman in 1631. His son Thomas Hickes, who survived him only by 3 years, was a distinguished Greek scholar. Of Francis Hickes’s writings only _Certaine Select Dialogues of Lucian: together with his True Historie_, with a biography of Lucian by Thomas, was printed, in 1634, again in 1664, and then in 1894. The manuscripts of his translations of Thucydides’s _The History of the Wars of Peloponnesus_ and of _The History of Herodian, beginning from the Reign of the Emperor Marcus_ remain at the library of Christ Church, Oxford.
Charles Wibley (1859–1930) was an English literary historian, essayist and journalist. While politically conservative his views in literature and arts were progressive, and he moved in literary and artistic circles.
Austin Morris Harmon (1878–1950) was an American classical scholar, best known for translating and editing the works of Lucian, even if he completed only 5 volumes of the intended 8 (volume 6 was edited by K. Kilburn, volumes 7 and 8 by Matthew Donald Macleod).


» About this Edition

This edition of Lucian’s _True History_ begins with Charles Whibley’s introduction to the 1894 edition of Francis Hickes’s translation, first published 1634. This is followed by A. M. Harmon’s translation from 1913, and finally the translation by Hickes.
While Hickes’s translation may still be superior, Harmon’s has the advantage, for those who do not know Greek, of translating Lucian’s fictitious Greek names into English: The _Psyllotoxotans_, to give one example of many, become _Flea-archers_ (who “ride on great fleas, from which they get their name; the fleas are as large as twelve elephants.”) Harmon’s footnotes, too, are helpful. Harmon’s abbreviated source references have been resolved (_Phot._ –» _Photius_, _Odyss._ –» _Odyssey_ etc.), two footnotes to his translation, with asterisks, are mine (R.S.).

Whibley’s _Introduction_ expects the reader to understand Greek -- the present edition leaves his Greek quotes untranslated. Some minor changes in spelling have been made (_to-day_ –» _today_, _phantasy_ –» _fantasy_), and one paragraph break has been inserted.

I have no access to a copy of Hickes’s original translation, published 1634, three years after his death. The present edition is based upon the privately printed London edition of 1894, which obviously has modernized the spelling -- what other changes may have been made, and whether Charles Whibley was also its editor, I do not know. The illustrations by William Strang, J. B. Clark and Aubrey Beardsley are not included here. For the present edition most of the obsolete spellings (or in some cases maybe printing errors) were left untouched, a few were corrected, the _æ_ ligature was resolved to _ae_, some colons replaced with full stops, and a few paragraph breaks added in Book I.

To help with ancient units of measurement that appear in the text:
The ancient furlong is 185 meter or a bit more than 600 feet (a bit less than the modern one, which is 201 meter or 660 feet).
The ancient stade (or stadium) is equal to the furlong.
The ancient Greek fathom is similar to the modern one, about 6 feet or roughly 1.8 meter, or about 1/100 of an ancient furlong.
The ancient Greek cubit is about 1.5 feet or 0.46 meter.

Greek quotes have been omitted from the plain text and ePub files, you can find them in the PDF version of this edition.


» Table of Contents

Introduction by Charles Whibley to the 1894 edition of Francis Hickes’s translation
Translation by A. M. Harmon (1913)
- Book I
- Book II
Translation by Francis Hickes (1634)
- Lucian: His True History
- The Second Book


» Introduction

It is a commonplace of criticism that Lucian was the first of the moderns, but in truth he is near to our time because of all the ancients he is nearest to his own. With Petronius he shared the discovery that there is material for literature in the debased and various life of every day -- that to the seeing eye the individual is more wonderful in colour and complexity than the severely simple abstraction of the poets. He replaced the tradition, respected of his fathers, by an observation more vivid and less pedantic than the note-book of the naturalist. He set the world in the dry light of truth, and since the vanity of mankind is a constant factor throughout the ages, there is scarce a page of Lucian’s writing that wears the faded air of antiquity. His personages are as familiar today as they were in the second century, because, with his pitiless determination to unravel the tangled skein of human folly, he never blinded his vision to their true qualities. And the multiplicity of his interest is as fresh as his penetration. Nothing came amiss to his eager curiosity. For the first time in the history of literature (with the doubtful exception of Cicero) we encounter a writer whose ceaseless activity includes the world. While others had declared themselves poets, historians, philosophers, Lucian comes forth as a man of letters. Had he lived today, he would have edited a newspaper, written leading articles, and kept his name ever before the public in the magazines. For he possessed the qualities, if he avoided the defects, of the journalist. His phrase had not been worn by constant use to imbecility; his sentences were not marred by the association of commonness; his style was still his own and fit for the expression of a personal view. But he noted such types and incidents as make an immediate, if perennial, appeal, and to study him is to be convinced that literature and journalism are not necessarily divorced.
The profession was new, and with the joy of the innovator Lucian was never tired of inventing new genres. Romance, criticism, satire -- he mastered them all. In _Toxaris_ and _The Ass_ he proves with what delicacy and restraint he could handle the story. His ill-omened apprenticeship to a sculptor gave him that taste and feeling for art which he turned to so admirable an account. He was, in fact, the first of the art-critics, and he pursued the craft with an easy unconsciousness of the heritage he bequeathed to the world. True, he is silent concerning the technical practice of the Greeks; true, he leaves us in profound ignorance of the art of Zeuxis, whose secrets he might have revealed, had he been less a man of letters. But he found in painting and sculpture an opportunity for elegance of phrase, and we would forgive a thousand shortcomings for such inspirations of beauty as the smile of Sosandra: to [Greek text omitted]. In literary criticism he was on surer ground, and here also he leaves the past behind. His knowledge of Greek poetry was profound; Homer he had by heart; and on every page he proves his sympathies by covert allusion or precise quotation. His treatise concerning the Writing of History preserves its force irresistible after seventeen centuries, nor has the wisdom of the ages impeached or modified this lucid argument. With a modest wit he compares himself to Diogenes, who, when he saw his fellow-citizens busied with the preparations of war, gathered his skirts about him and fell to rolling his tub up and down. So Lucian, unambitious of writing history, sheltered himself from “the waves and the smoke,” and was content to provide others with the best of good counsel. Yet such is the irony of accident that, as Lucian’s criticism has outlived the masterpieces of Zeuxis, so the historians have snatched an immortality from his censure; and let it be remembered for his glory that he used Thucydides as a scourge wherewith to beat impostors. But matters of so high import did not always engross his humour, and in _The Illiterate Book-buyer_ he satirizes a fashion of the hour and of all time with a courage and brutality which tear the heart out of truth. How intimately does he realize his victim! And how familiar is this same victim in his modern shape! You know the very streets he haunts; you know the very shops wherein he is wont to acquire his foolish treasures; you recognize that not by a single trait has Lucian dishonoured his model. In yet another strange instance Lucian anticipated the journalist of today. Though his disciples know it not, he invented the interview. In that famous visit to the Elysian Fields, which is a purple patch upon his masterpiece, _The True History_, he “went to talk with Homer the Poet, our leisure serving us both well,” and he put precisely those questions which the modern hack, note-book in hand, would seek to resolve. First, remembering the seven cities, he would know of Homer what fatherland claimed him, and when the poet “said indeed he was a Babylonian, and among his own countrymen not called Homer but Tigranes,” Lucian straightly “questioned him about those verses in his books that are disallowed as not of his making;” whereto Homer replied with a proper condemnation of Zenodotus and Aristarchus. And you wonder whether Lucian is chastising his contemporaries or looking with the eye of a prophet into the future.
But even more remarkable than his many-coloured interest is Lucian’s understanding. He was, so to say, a perfect Intelligence thrown by accident into an age of superstition and credulity. It is not only that he knew all things: he saw all things in their right relation. If the Pagan world had never before been conscious of itself, it had no excuse to harbour illusions after his coming. Mr. Pater speaks of the intellectual light he turned upon dim places, and truly no corner of life escaped the gleam of his lantern. Gods, philosophers, necromancers, yielded up their secrets to his enquiry. With pitiless logic he criticized their extravagance and pretension; and actively anticipating the spirit of modern science, he accepted no fact, he subscribed to no theory, which he had not examined with a cold impartiality.
Indeed, he was Scepticism in human shape, but as the weapon of his destruction is always raillery, as he never takes either himself or his victims with exaggerated seriousness, you may delight in his attack, even though you care not which side wins the battle. His wit was as mordant as Heine’s own; -- is it fantastical to suggest that Lucian too carried Hebrew blood in his veins? -- yet when the onslaught is most unsparing he is still joyous. For a gay contempt, not a bitter hatred, is the note of his satire. And for the very reason that his scepticism was felt, that it sprang from a close intimacy with the follies of his own time, so it is fresh and familiar to an age that knows not Zeus. Not even the _Dialogues of the Gods_ are out of date, for if we no longer reverence Olympus, we still blink our eyes at the flash of ridicule. And might not the _Philopseudes_, that masterly analysis of ghostly terrors, might not _Alexander the False Prophet_, have been written yesterday?
And thus we arrive at Lucian’s weakness. In spite of its brilliance and flippancy, his scepticism is at times over-intelligent. His good sense baffles you by its infallibility; his sanity is so magnificently beyond question, that you pray for an interlude of unreason. The sprightliness of his wit, the alertness of his fancy, mitigate the perpetual rightness of his judgment. But it must be confessed that for all his delicate sense of ridicule he cherished a misguided admiration of the truth. If only he had understood the joy of self-deception, if only he had realized more often (as he realized in _The Ass_) the delight of throwing probability to the winds, we had regarded him with a more constant affection. His capital defect sprang from a lack of the full-blooded humour which should at times have led him into error. And yet by an irony it was this very love of truth which suggested _The True History_, that enduring masterpiece of fantasy. Setting out to prove his hatred of other men’s lies, he shows himself on the road the greatest liar of them all. “The father and founder of all this foolery was Homer’s Ulysses”: thus he writes in his Preface, confessing that in a spirit of emulation he “turned his style to publish untruths,” but with an honester mind, “for this one thing I confidently pronounce for a truth, that I lie.” Such is the spirit of the work, nor is there the smallest doubt that Lucian, once embarked upon his voyage, slipped from his ideal, to enjoy the lying for its own sake. If _The True History_ fails as a parody, that is because we care not a jot for Ctesias, Iambulus and the rest, at whom the satire is levelled. Its fascination, in fact, is due to those same qualities which, in others, its author affected to despise. The facile variety of its invention can scarce be matched in literature, and the lies are told with so delightful an unconcern, that belief is never difficult. Nor does the narrative ever flag. It ends at the same high level of falsehood in which it has its beginning. And the credibility is increased by the harmonious consistency of each separate lie.
At the outset the traveller discovers a river of wine, and forthwith travels up stream to find the source, and “when we were come to the head” (to quote Hickes’s translation), “no spring at all appeared, but mighty vine trees of infinite number, which from their roots distilled pure wine, which made the river run so abundantly.” So conclusive is the explanation, that you only would have wondered had the stream been of water. And how admirable is the added touch that he who ate fish from the river was made drunk! Then by a pleasant gradation you are carried on from the Hippogypians, or the Riders of Vultures, every feather in whose wing is bigger and longer than the mast of a tall ship, from the fleas as big as twelve elephants, to those spiders, of mighty bigness, every one of which exceeded in size an isle of the Cyclades. “These were appointed to spin a web in the air between the Moon and the Morning Star, which was done in an instant, and made a plain champaign, upon which the foot forces were planted.” Truly a very Colossus of falsehood, but Lucian’s ingenuity is inexhausted and inexhaustible, and the mighty Whale is his masterpiece of impudence. For he “contained in greatness fifteen hundred furlongs”; his teeth were taller than beech-trees, and when he swallowed the travellers, he showed himself so far superior to Jonah’s fish, that ship and all sailed down his throat, and happily he caught not the pigmy shallop between his chops. And the geographical divisions of the Whale’s belly, and Lucian’s adventures therein, are they not set down with circumstantial verity? Then there is the episode of the frozen ship, and the sea of milk, with its well-pressed cheese for an island, which reminds one of the Elizabethan madrigal: “If there were O an Hellespont of Cream.” Moreover, the verisimilitude is enhanced by a scrupulously simple style. No sooner is the preface concerning lying at an end than Lucian lapses into pure narrative. A wealth of minutely considered detail gives an air of reality to the most monstrous impossibility; the smallest facts are explicitly divulged; the remote accessories described with order and impressiveness; so that the wildest invention appears plausible, even inevitable, and you know that you are in company with the very genius of falsehood. Nor does this wild diversity of invention suggest romance. It is still classic in style and shape; not a phrase nor a word is lost; and expression, as always in the classics, is reduced to its lowest terms. But when the travellers reach the Islands of the Blessed, the style takes on a colour and a beauty which it knew not before. A fragrant air breathed upon them, as of “roses, daffodils, gillyflowers, lilies, violets, myrtles, bays, and blossoms of vines.” Happy also was the Isle to look upon: [Greek text omitted]: “a still and gentle air compassing the whole country.” Where will you find a more vivid impression of elegance and serenity? or where match “the melody of the branches, like the sound of wind instruments in a solitary place” [Greek text omitted]? And when the splendour of the city breaks upon you, with its smaragdus, its cinnamon-tree, its amethyst, ivory, and beryl, the rich barbarity suggests Solomon’s Temple, or the City of the Revelation. Its inhabitants are the occasion of infinite jesting, and again and again does Lucian satirize the philosophers, his dearest foes. Socrates was in danger of being thrust forth by Rhadamanthus, [Greek text omitted], while as for Diogenes the Sinopean, so profoundly was he changed from his old estate, that he had married Lais the Harlot. The journey to Hell is another excuse to gird at the historians. The severest torments were inflicted, says Lucian, upon Ctesias the Cnidian, Herodotus and many others, which the writer beholding “was put in great hopes that I should never have anything to do there, for I do not know that ever I spake any untruth in my life.” And yet with all his irony, all his scorn, Lucian has ever a side-glance at literature. The verse of Homer is constantly upon his lips, and it is from Homer that the Gods take their ditties in the Elysian fields. Again, when the traveller visits the city of Nephelococcygia, it is but to think upon the poet Aristophanes, “how wise a man he was, and how true a reporter, and how little cause there is to question his fidelity for what he hath written.”
Such is the work which, itself a masterpiece, has been a pattern and an exemplar unto others. If Utopia and its unnumbered rivals derive from Plato, there is not a single Imaginary Traveller that is not modelled upon Lucian. _The True History_ was, in effect, the beginning of a new literature. Not only was its framework borrowed, not only was its habit of fantastic names piously imitated, but the disciples, like the master, turned their voyages to the purpose of satire. It was Rabelais who made the first adaptation, for, while Epistemon’s descent into Hell was certainly suggested by Lucian, Pantagruel’s voyage is an ample travesty of _The True History_, and Lanternland, the home of the Lychnobii, is but Lychnopolis, Lucian’s own City of Lights. The seventeenth century discovered another imitator in Cyrano de Bergerac, whose tepid _Voyage dans la Lune_ is interesting merely because it is a link in the chain that unites Lucian with Swift. Yet the book had an immense popularity, and Cyrano’s biographer has naught to say of the original traveller, save that he told his story «avec beaucoup moins de vraisemblance et de gentilesse d’imagination que M. de Bergerac.» An astounding judgment surely, which time has already reversed. And then came _Gulliver’s Travels_, incomparably the greatest descendant of _The True History_. To what excellent purpose Swift followed his Lucian is proved alike by the amazing probability of his narrative, and the cruelty of his satire. Like Lucian, he professed an unveiled contempt for philosophers and mathematicians; unlike Lucian, he made his imaginary journey the occasion for a fierce satire upon kings and politicians. But so masterly is the narrative, so convincing the reality of Lilliput and Brobdignag, that Gulliver retains its hold upon our imagination, though the meaning of its satire is long since blunted. Swift’s work came to astonish the world in 1727, and some fourteen years later in the century Holberg astonished the wits of Denmark with a satire cast in Lucian’s mould. _Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum_ -- thus ran the title, and from Latin the book was translated into every known tongue. The city of walking trees, the home of the Potuans, and many another invention, prove Holberg’s debt to the author of _The True History_. And if the _genre_ is dead today, it is dead because the most intrepid humourist would hesitate to walk in the footsteps of Lemuel Gulliver.
Fortunate in his imitators, Lucian has been not wholly unfortunate in his translators. Not even envy could pick a quarrel with Francis Hickes, whose Englishing of _The True History_ is here reprinted. The book appeared, under the auspices of Hickes’s son, in 1634, four years after the translator’s death. Thus it is described on the title-page: “Certaine Select Dialogues of Lucian together with his True Historie, translated from the Greeke into English by Mr. Francis Hickes. Whereunto is added the Life of Lucian gathered out of his own Writings, with briefe Notes and Illustrations upon each Dialogue and Booke, by T. H. Master of Arts, of Christ Church in Oxford. Oxford, Printed by William Turner. 1634.” Composed with a certain dignity, it is dedicated “to the Right Worshipfull Dr. Duppa, Deane of Christ-Church, and Vice-Chancellor of the famous Universitie in Oxford.” And the work reflects a wholesome glory upon the famous University. For it is the work of a scholar, who knew both the languages. Though his diction lacked the spirit and colour which distinguished the splendid versions of North and Holland, he was far more keenly conscious of his original than were those masters of prose. Not only did he, unlike North, translate directly from the Greek, but he followed his original with loyalty and patience. In brief, his Lucian is a miracle of suitability. The close simplicity of Hickes fits the classical restraint of _The True History_ to admiration. As the Greek is a model of narrative, so you cannot read the English version without thinking of the incomparable Hakluyt. Thirty years after the first printing of the translation, Jasper Mayne published his “Part of Lucian made English,” wherein he added sundry versions of his own to the work already accomplished by Francis Hickes. And in his “Epistle Dedicatory” he discusses the art of translation with an intelligence which proves how intimately he realized the excellent quality of Hickes’s version. “For as the Painter,” thus Jasper Mayne, “who would draw a man of a bald head, rumpled forehead, copper nose, pigge eyes, and ugly face, draws him not to life, nor doth the business of his art, if he draw him less deformed or ugly than he is; or as he who would draw a faire, amiable lady, limbes with an erring pencil, and drawes a libell, not a face, if he gives her not just features, and perfections: So in the Translation of Bookes, he who makes a dull author elegant and quick; or a sharp, elegant author flat, rustick, rude and dull, by contrary wayes, commits the same sinne, and cannot be said to translate, but to transforme.” That is sound sense, and judged by the high standard of Jasper Mayne, Francis Hickes has most valiantly acquitted himself.
He was the son of Richard Hickes, an arras-weaver of Barcheston, in Warwickshire, and after taking the degree of bachelor in the University of Oxford, which he entered in 1579, at the age of thirteen, he was diverted (says Thomas, his son) “by a country retirement.” Henceforth he devoted his life to husbandry and Greek. Besides Lucian, he translated Thucydides and Herodian, the manuscripts of which are said to survive in the library of Christ Church. Possibly it was his long retirement that gave a turn of pedantry to his mind. It was but natural that in his remote garden he should exaggerate the importance of the knowledge acquired in patient solitude. But certain it is that the notes wherewith he decorated his margins are triumphs of inapposite erudition. When Lucian describes the famous cobwebs, each one of which was as big as an island of the Cyclades, Hickes thinks to throw light upon the text with this astonishing irrelevancy: “They are in the Aegean Sea, in number 13.” The foible is harmless, nay pleasant, and consonant with the character of the learned recluse. Thus lived Francis Hickes, silent and unknown, until in 1630 he died at a kinsman’s house at Sutton in Gloucestershire. And you regret that his glory was merely posthumous. For, pedant as he was, he made known to his countrymen the enemy of all the pedants, and turned a masterpiece of Greek into English as sound and scholarly as is found in any translator of his time.


» A True Story
By Lucian of Samosata
English Translation by A.M. Harmon

» Book I

Men interested in athletics and in the care of their bodies think not only of condition and exercise but also of relaxation in season; in fact, they consider this the principal part of training. In like manner students, I think, after much reading of serious works may profitably relax their minds and put them in better trim for future labour. It would be appropriate recreation for them if they were to take up the sort of reading that, instead of affording just pure amusement based on wit and humour, also boasts a little food for thought that the Muses would not altogether spurn; and I think they will consider the present work something of the kind. They will find it enticing not only for the novelty of its subject, for the humour of its plan and because I tell all kinds of lies in a plausible and specious way, but also because everything in my story is a more or less comical parody of one or another of the poets, historians and philosophers of old, who have written much that smacks of miracles and fables. I would cite them by name, were it not that you yourself will recognise them from your reading. One of them is Ctesias, son of Ctesiochus, of Cnidos, who wrote a great deal about India and its characteristics that he had never seen himself nor heard from anyone else with a reputation for truthfulness. Iambulus also wrote much that was strange about the countries in the great sea: he made up a falsehood that is patent to everybody, but wrote a story that is not uninteresting for all that.{1} Many others, with the same intent, have written about imaginary travels and journeys of theirs, telling of huge beasts, cruel men and strange ways of living. Their guide and instructor in this sort of charlatanry is Homer’s Odysseus, who tells Alcinous and his court about winds in bondage, one-eyed men, cannibals and savages; also about animals with many heads, and transformations of his comrades wrought with drugs. This stuff, and much more like it, is what our friend humbugged the illiterate Phaeacians with! Well, on reading all these authors, I did not find much fault with them for their lying, as I saw that this was already a common practice even among men who profess philosophy.{2} I did wonder, though, that they thought that they could write untruths and not get caught at it. Therefore, as I myself, thanks to my vanity, was eager to hand something down to posterity, that I might not be the only one excluded from the privileges of poetic licence, and as I had nothing true to tell, not having had any adventures of significance, I took to lying. But my lying is far more honest than theirs, for though I tell the truth in nothing else, I shall at least be truthful in saying that I am a liar. I think I can escape the censure of the world by my own admission that I am not telling a word of truth. Be it understood, then, that I am writing about things which I have neither seen nor had to do with nor learned from others -- which, in fact, do not exist at all and, in the nature of things, cannot exist.{3} Therefore my readers should on no account believe in them.
{1: The writings of Ctesias and Iambulus are lost; also those of Antonius Diogenes, whose story, _On the Wonders beyond Thule_, was according to Photius (_Bibliotheka_, cod. 166, 111 b) the fountain-head of Lucian’s tale.}
{2: A slap at Plato’s _Republic_ (x. 614 A seq.), as the scholiast says.}
{3: Compare the protestations of Ctesias and of Antonius Diogenes (Photius cod. 72, 49–50; 166, 109 b).}
Once upon a time, setting out from the Pillars of Hercules and heading for the western ocean with a fair wind, I went a-voyaging. The motive and purpose of my journey lay in my intellectual activity and desire for adventure, and in my wish to find out what the end of the ocean was, and who the people were that lived on the other side. On this account I put aboard a good store of provisions, stowed water enough, enlisted in the venture fifty of my acquaintances who were like-minded with myself, got together also a great quantity of arms, shipped the best sailing-master to be had at a big inducement, and put my boat -- she was a pinnace -- in trim for a long and difficult voyage. Well, for a day and a night we sailed before the wind without making very much offing, as land was still dimly in sight; but at sunrise on the second day the wind freshened, the sea rose, darkness came on, and before we knew it we could no longer even get our canvas in. Committing ourselves to the gale and giving up, we drove for seventy-nine days. On the eightieth day, however, the sun came out suddenly and at no great distance we saw a high, wooded island ringed about with sounding surf, which, however, was not rough, as already the worst of the storm was abating.{4}
{4: This paragraph is based on Iambulus (Diodorus 2. 55).}
Putting in and going ashore, we lay on the ground for some time in consequence of our long misery, but finally we arose and told off thirty of our number to stay and guard the ship and twenty to go inland with me and look over the island. When we had gone forward through the wood about three furlongs from the sea, we saw a slab of bronze, inscribed with Greek letters, faint and obliterated, which said: “To this point came Hercules and Dionysus.” There were also two footprints in the rock close by, one of which was a hundred feet long, the other less -- to my thinking, the smaller one was left by Dionysus, the other by Hercules.{5} We did obeisance and went on, but had not gone far when we came upon a river of wine, just as like as could be to Chian.{6} The stream was large and full, so that in places it was actually navigable. Thus we could not help having much greater faith in the inscription on the slab, seeing the evidence of Dionysus’ visit. I resolved to find out where the river took its rise, and went up along the stream. What I found was not a source, but a number of large grapevines, full of clusters; beside the root of each flowed a spring of clear wine, and the springs gave rise to the river. There were many fish to be seen in it, very similar to wine in colour and in taste. In fact, on catching and eating some of them, we became drunk, and when we cut into them we found them full of lees, of course. Later on, we bethought ourselves to mix with them the other kind of fish, those from the water, and so temper the strength of our edible wine.
{5: Cf. Herodotus 4, 82; a footprint of Hercules, two cubits long.}
{6: Cf. Ctesias (Photius cod. 72, 46 a).}
Next, after crossing the river at a place where it was fordable, we found something wonderful in grapevines. The part which came out of the ground, the trunk itself, was stout and well-grown, but the upper part was in each case a woman, entirely perfect from the waist up. They were like our pictures of Daphne turning into a tree when Apollo is just catching her. Out of their finger-tips grew the branches, and they were full of grapes. Actually, the hair of their heads was tendrils and leaves and clusters! When we came up, they welcomed and greeted us, some of them speaking Lydian, some Indian, but the most part Greek. They even kissed us on the lips, and everyone that was kissed at once became reeling drunk. They did not suffer us, however, to gather any of the fruit, but cried out in pain when it was plucked. Some of them actually wanted us to embrace them, and two of my comrades complied, but could not get away again. They were held fast by the part which had touched them,{*} for it had grown in and struck root. Already branches had grown from their fingers, tendrils entwined them, and they were on the point of bearing fruit like the others any minute. Leaving them in the lurch, we made off to the boat, and on getting there, told the men we had left behind about everything, including the affair of our comrades with the vines. Then, taking jars, we furnished ourselves not only with water but with wine from the river, encamped for the night on the beach close by, and at daybreak put to sea with a moderate breeze.
{*: The translation by Hickes clarifies which body parts these were. [R.S.]}
About noon, when the island was no longer in sight, a whirlwind suddenly arose, spun the boat about, raised her into the air about three hundred furlongs and did not let her down into the sea again; but while she was hung up aloft a wind struck her sails and drove her ahead with bellying canvas. For seven days and seven nights we sailed the air, and on the eighth day we saw a great country in it, resembling an island, bright and round and shining with a great light. Running in there and anchoring, we went ashore, and on investigating found that the land was inhabited and cultivated. By day nothing was in sight from the place, but as night came on we began to see many other islands hard by, some larger, some smaller, and they were like fire in colour. We also saw another country below, with cities in it and rivers and seas and forests and mountains. This we inferred to be our own world.
We determined to go still further inland, but we met what they call the Vulture Dragoons, and were arrested. These are men riding on large vultures and using the birds for horses. The vultures are large and for the most part have three heads: you can judge of their size from the fact that the mast of a large merchantman is not so long or so thick as the smallest of the quills they have.{7} The Vulture Dragoons are commissioned to fly about the country and bring before the king any stranger they may find, so of course they arrested us and brought us before him. When he had looked us over and drawn his conclusions from our clothes, he said: “Then you are Greeks, are you, strangers?” and when we assented, “Well, how did you get here, with so much air to cross?” We told him all, and he began and told us about himself: that he too was a human being, Endymion by name, who had once been ravished from our country in his sleep, and on coming there had been made king of the land. He said that his country was the moon that shines down on us.{8} He urged us to take heart, however, and suspect no danger, for we should have everything that we required. “And if I succeed,” said he, “in the war which I am now making on the people of the sun, you shall lead the happiest of lives with me.” We asked who the enemy were, and what the quarrel was about. “Phaethon,” said he, “the king of the inhabitants of the sun -- for it is inhabited,{9} you know, as well as the moon -- has been at war with us for a long time now. It began in this way. Once upon a time I gathered together the poorest people in my kingdom and undertook to plant a colony on the Morning Star, which was empty and uninhabited. Phaethon out of jealousy thwarted the colonisation, meeting us half-way at the head of his Ant Dragoons. At that time we were beaten, for we were not a match for them in strength, and we retreated: now, however, I desire to make war again and plant the colony. If you wish, then, you may take part with me in the expedition and I will give each of you one of my royal vultures and a complete outfit. We shall take the field to-morrow.” “Very well,” said I, “since you think it best.”
{7: Cf. _Odyssey_ 9, 322f.}
{8: The story of Antonius Diogenes included a description of a trip to the moon (Photius 111 a). Compare also Lucian’s own _Icaromenippus_.}
{9: Cf. Lactantius 3, 23, 41: “Seneca says that there have been Stoics who raised the question of ascribing to the sun a population of its own.”}
That night we stopped there as his guests, but at daybreak we arose and took our posts, for the scouts signalled that the enemy was near. The number of our army was a hundred thousand, apart from the porters, the engineers, the infantry and the foreign allies; of this total, eighty thousand were Vulture Dragoons and twenty thousand Grassplume-riders. The Grassplume is also a very large bird, which instead of plumage is all shaggy with grass and has wings very like lettuce-leaves. Next to these the Millet-shooters and the Garlic-fighters were posted. Endymion also had allies who came from the Great Bear -- thirty thousand Flea-archers and fifty thousand Volplaneurs. The Flea-archers ride on great fleas, from which they get their name; the fleas are as large as twelve elephants. The Volplaneurs are infantry, to be sure, but they fly in the air without wings. As to the manner of their flight, they pull their long tunics up through their girdles, let the baggy folds fill with wind as if they were sails, and are carried along like boats. For the most part they serve as light infantry in battle. It was said, too, that the stars over Cappadocia would send seventy thousand Sparrowcorns and five thousand Crane Dragoons. I did not get a look at them, as they did not come, so I have not ventured to write about their characteristics, for the stories about them were wonderful and incredible.{10}
{10: Compare the reticence of Herodotus (1, 193), Thucydides (3, 113, 6), and Tacitus (_Germania_ 46).}
These were the forces of Endymion. They all had the same equipment -- helmets of beans (their beans are large and tough); scale-corselets of lupines (they sew together the skins of lupines to make the corselets, and in that country the skin of the lupine is unbreakable, like horn); shields and swords of the Greek pattern. When the time came, they took position thus: on the right wing, the Vulture Dragoons and the king, with the bravest about him (we were among them); on the left, the Grassplumes; in the centre, the allies, in whatever formation they liked. The infantry came to about sixty million, and was deployed as follows. Spiders in that country are numerous and large, all of them far larger than the Cyclades islands. They were commissioned by the king to span the air between the Moon and the Morning Star with a web, and as soon as they had finished and had made a plain, he deployed his infantry on it. Their leaders were Owlett son of Fairweather, and two others.
As to the enemy, on the left were the Ant Dragoons, with whom was Phaethon. They are very large beasts with wings, like the ants that we have, except in size: the largest one was two hundred feet long.{11} They themselves fought, as well as their riders, and made especially good use of their feelers. They were said to number about fifty thousand. On their right were posted the Sky-mosquitoes, numbering also about fifty thousand, all archers riding on large mosquitoes. Next to them were the Sky-dancers, a sort of light infantry, formidable however, like all the rest, for they slung radishes at long range, and any man that they hit could not hold out a moment, but died, and his wound was malodorous. They were said to anoint their missiles with mallow poison. Beside them were posted the Stalk-mushrooms, heavy infantry employed at close quarters, ten thousand in number. They had the name Stalk-mushrooms because they used mushrooms for shields and stalks of asparagus for spears. Near them stood the Puppycorns, who were sent him by the inhabitants of the Dog-star, five thousand dog-faced men who fight on the back of winged acorns.{12} It was said that there were tardy allies in Phaethon’s case, too -- the slingers whom he had summoned from the Milky Way, and the Cloud-centaurs. The latter to be sure, arrived just after the battle was over (if only they had not!); but the slingers did not put in an appearance at all. On account of this, they say, Phaethon was furious with them and afterwards ravaged their country with fire. This, then, was the array with which Phaethon came on. Joining battle when the flags had been flown and the donkeys on both sides had brayed (for they had donkeys for trumpeters), they fought. The left wing of the Sunites fled at once, without even receiving the charge of the Vulture Horse, and we pursued, cutting them down. But their right wing got the better of the left on our side, and the Sky-mosquitoes advanced in pursuit right up to the infantry. Then, when the infantry came to the rescue, they broke and fled, especially as they saw that the forces on their left had been defeated. It was a glorious victory, in which many were taken alive and many were slain; so much blood flowed on the clouds that they were dyed and looked red, as they do in our country when the sun is setting, and so much also dripped down on the earth that I wonder whether something of the sort did not take place in the sky long ago, when Homer supposed that Zeus had sent a rain of blood on account of the death of Sarpedon.{13}
{11: Herodotus (3, 102) tells of ants bigger than foxes.}
{12: Herodotus (4, 191) tells of dog-headed men and of headless men with eyes in their breasts.}
{13: Iliad 16, 459.}
When we had returned from the pursuit we set up two trophies, one on the spider-webs for the infantry battle and the other, for the sky battle, on the clouds. We were just doing this when the scouts reported that the Cloud-centaurs, who should have come to Phaethon’s aid before the battle, were advancing on us. Before we knew it, they were coming on in plain sight, a most unparalleled spectacle, being a combination of winged horses and men. In size the men were as large as the Colossus of Rhodes from the waist up, and the horses were as large as a great merchantman. Their number, however, I leave unrecorded for fear that someone may think it incredible, it was so great. Their leader was the Archer from the Zodiac. When they saw that their friends had been defeated, they sent word to Phaethon to advance again, and then, on their own account, in regular formation fell on the disordered Moonites, who had broken ranks and scattered to pursue and to plunder. They put them all to flight, pursued the king himself to the city and killed most of his birds; they plucked up the trophies and overran the whole plain woven by the spiders, and they captured me with two of my comrades. By this time Phaethon too was present, and other trophies were being set up by their side.
As for us, we were taken off to the sun that day, our hands tied behind our backs with a section of spider-web. The enemy decided not to lay siege to the city, but on their way back they built a wall through the air, so that the rays of the sun should no longer reach the moon. The wall was double, made of cloud, so that a genuine eclipse of the moon took place, and she was completely enshrouded in unbroken night. Hard pressed by this, Endymion sent and begged them to pull down the construction and not let them lead their lives in darkness. He promised to pay tribute, to be an ally and not to make war again, and volunteered to give hostages for all this. Phaethon and his people held two assemblies; on the first day they did not lay aside a particle of their anger, but on the second day they softened, and the peace was made on these terms:{14}
{14: Compare the Athenian-Spartan treaty, Thucydides 5, 18.}

    On the following conditions the Sunites and their allies make peace with the Moonites and their allies, to wit:
    That the Sunites tear down the dividing-wall and do not invade the moon again, and that they make over the prisoners of war, each at a set ransom;
    That the Moonites permit the stars to be autonomous, and do not make war on the Sunites;
    That each country aid the other if it be attacked;
    That in yearly tribute the King of the Moonites pay the King of the Sunites ten thousand gallons of dew, and that he give ten thousand of his people as hostages;
    That the colony on the Morning Star be planted in common, and that anyone else who so desires may take part in it;
    That the treaty be inscribed on a slab of electrum and set up in mid-air, on the common confines. Attested under hand and seal.
    (For the Sunites) Firebrace, Parcher, Burns
    (For the Moonites) Darkling, Moony, Allbright

On those terms peace was made, and then the wall was torn down at once and we prisoners were restored. When we reached the moon we were met and tearfully welcomed by our comrades and by Endymion himself. He wanted me to stay with him and join the colony, promising to give me his own son in marriage -- there are no women in their country. But I was not to be persuaded; I asked him to let me go down to the sea. When he perceived that he could not prevail on me, he let us go after entertaining us for seven days.
In the interval, while I was living on the moon, I observed some strange and wonderful things that I wish to speak of. In the first place there is the fact that they are not born of women but of men: they marry men and do not even know the word woman at all! Up to the age of twenty-five each is a wife, and thereafter a husband. They carry their children in the calf of the leg instead of the belly. When conception takes place the calf begins to swell. In course of time they cut it open and deliver the child dead, and then they bring it to life by putting it in the wind with its mouth open. It seems to me that the term “belly of the leg”{15} came to us Greeks from there, since the leg performs the function of a belly with them. But I will tell you something else, still more wonderful. They have a kind of men whom they call the Arboreals, who are brought into the world as follows: Exsecting a man’s right genital gland, they plant it in the ground. From it grows a very large tree of flesh, resembling the emblem of Priapus: it has branches and leaves, and its fruit is acorns a cubit thick. When these ripen, they harvest them and shell out the men. Another thing, they have artificial parts that are sometimes of ivory and sometimes, with the poor, of wood, and make use of them in their intercourse. When a man grows old, he does not die, but is dissolved like smoke and turns into air. They all eat the same food; they light a fire and cook frogs on the coals -- they have quantities of frogs, that fly about in the air -- and while they are cooking, they sit about them as if at table, snuff up the rising smoke and gorge themselves.{16} This is the food they eat, and their drink is air, which is squeezed into a cup and yields a liquid like dew. They are not subject to calls of nature, which, in fact, they have no means of answering. Another important function, too, is not provided for as one would expect, but in the hollow of the knee.
{15: I.e. calf of the leg.}
{16: Cf. Herodotus 1, 202; 4, 75; Strabo 15, 1, 57.}
A man is thought beautiful in that country if he is bald and hairless, and they quite detest longhaired people. It is different on the comets, where they think long-haired people beautiful -- there were visitors in the moon who told us about them.{17} Another point -- they have beards that grow a little above the knee, and they have no toe-nails, but are all single-toed. Over each man’s rump grows a long cabbage-leaf, like a tail, which is always green and does not break if he falls on his back. Their noses run honey of great pungency, and when they work or take exercise, they sweat milk all over their bodies, of such quality that cheese can actually be made from it by dripping in a little of the honey. They make oil from onions, and it is very clear and sweet-smelling, like myrrh. They have many water-vines, the grapes of which are like hailstones, and to my thinking, the hail that falls down on us is due to the bursting of the bunches when a wind strikes and shakes those vines. They use their bellies for pockets, putting into them anything they have use for, as they can open and shut them. These parts do not seem to have any intestines in them or anything else, except that they are all shaggy and hairy inside, so that the children enter them when it is cold.
{17: The point of this is that [Greek word omitted], whence our word comet, means _long-haired_.}
The clothing of the rich is malleable glass{18} and that of the poor, spun bronze; for that region is rich in bronze, which they work like wool by wetting it with water. I am reluctant to tell you what sort of eyes they have, for fear that you may think me lying on account of the incredibility of the story, but I will tell you, notwithstanding. The eyes that they have are removable, and whenever they wish they take them out and put them away until they want to see: then they put them in and look. Many, on losing their own, borrow other people’s to see with, and the rich folk keep a quantity stored up.{19} For ears they have plane-leaves, except only the acorn-men, who have wooden ones. In the royal purlieus I saw another marvel. A large looking-glass is fixed above a well, which is not very deep. If a man goes down into the well, he hears everything that is said among us on earth, and if he looks into the looking-glass he sees every city and every country just as if he were standing over it. When I tried it I saw my family and my whole native land, but I cannot go further and say for certain whether they also saw me. Anyone who does not believe this is so will find, if ever he gets there himself, that I am telling the truth.
{18: Lucian’s glass clothing [Greek word omitted] is a punning parody on wooden clothing [Greek word omitted], i.e. cotton (Herodotus 7, 65).}
{19: Compare the story of the Graeae. [Three sisters who shared one eye and one tooth among them. -- R.S.]}
To go back to my story, we embraced the king and his friends, went aboard, and put off. Endymion even gave me presents -- two of the glass tunics, five of bronze, and a suit of lupine armour -- but I left them all behind in the whale. He also sent a thousand Vulture Dragoons with us to escort us for sixty miles. On our way we passed many countries and put in at the Morning Star, which was just being colonised. We landed there and procured water. Going aboard and making for the zodiac, we passed the sun to port, hugging the shore. We did not land, though many of my comrades wanted to; for the wind was unfavourable. But we saw that the country was green and fertile and well-watered, and full of untold good things. On seeing us, the Cloud-centaurs, who had entered the service of Phaethon, flew up to the ship and then went away again when they found out that the treaty protected us. The Vulture Dragoons had already left us.
Sailing the next night and day we reached Lamp-town toward evening, already being on our downward way. This city lies in the air midway between the Pleiades and the Hyades, though much lower than the Zodiac. On landing, we did not find any men at all, but a lot of lamps running about and loitering in the public square and at the harbour. Some of them were small and poor, so to speak: a few, being great and powerful, were very splendid and conspicuous. Each of them has his own house, or sconce, they have names like men, and we heard them talking. They offered us no harm, but invited us to be their guests. We were afraid, however, and none of us ventured to eat a mouthful or close an eye. They have a public building in the centre of the city, where their magistrate sits all night and calls each of them by name, and whoever does not answer is sentenced to death for deserting. They are executed by being put out. We were at court, saw what went on, and heard the lamps defend themselves and tell why they came late. There I recognised our own lamp: I spoke to him and enquired how things were at home, and he told me all about them.
That night we stopped there, but on the next day we set sail and continued our voyage. By this time we were near the clouds. There we saw the city of Cloudcuckootown,{20} and wondered at it, but did not visit it, as the wind did not permit. The king, however, was said to be Crow Dawson. It made me think of Aristophanes the poet, a wise and truthful man whose writings are distrusted without reason. On the next day but one, the ocean was already in plain sight, but no land anywhere except the countries in the air, and they began to appear fiery and bright. Toward noon on the fourth day the wind fell gently and gave out, and we were set down on the sea. When we touched the water we were marvellously pleased and happy, made as merry as we could in every way, and went over the side for a swim, for by good luck it was calm and the sea was smooth.
{20: The capital of Birdland in Aristophanes’ play _The Birds_.}
It would seem, however, that a change for the better often proves a prelude to greater ills. We had sailed just two days in fair weather and the third day was breaking when toward sunrise we suddenly saw a number of sea-monsters, whales. One among them, the largest of all, was fully one hundred and fifty miles long. He came at us with open mouth, dashing up the sea far in advance, foam-washed, showing teeth much larger than the emblems of Dionysus in our country,{21} and all sharp as calthrops and white as ivory. We said good-bye to one another, embraced, and waited. He was there in an instant, and with a gulp swallowed us down, ship and all. He just missed crushing us with his teeth, but the boat slipped through the gaps between them into the interior. When we were inside, it was dark at first, and we could not see anything, but afterwards, when he opened his mouth, we saw a great cavity, flat all over and high, and large enough for the housing of a great city. In it there were fish, large and small, and many other creatures all mangled, ships’ rigging and anchors, human bones, and merchandise. In the middle there was land with hills on it, which to my thinking was formed of the mud that he had swallowed. Indeed, a forest of all kinds of trees had grown on it, garden stuff had come up, and everything appeared to be under cultivation. The coast of the island was twenty-seven miles long. Sea-birds were to be seen nesting on the trees, gulls and kingfishers.{22}
{21: On the size of these, see Lucian’s _Syrian Goddess_, 23.}
{22: This story of the whale is no longer considered a parody on Jonah’s adventure, as there were other versions of the tale afloat in antiquity.}
At first we shed tears for a long time, and then I roused my comrades and we provided for the ship by shoring it up and for ourselves by rubbing sticks together, lighting a fire and getting dinner as best we could. We had at hand plenty of fish of all kinds, and we still had the water from the Morning Star. On rising the next day, whenever the whale opened his mouth we saw mountains one moment, nothing but sky the next, and islands frequently, and we perceived by this that he was rushing swiftly to all parts of the sea. When at length we became wonted to our abiding-place, I took seven of my comrades and went into the forest, wishing to have a look at everything. I had not yet gone quite five furlongs when I found a temple of Poseidon, as the inscription indicated, and not far from it a number of graves with stones on them. Near by was a spring of clear water. We also heard the barking of a dog, smoke appeared in the distance, and we made out something like a farmhouse, too.
Advancing eagerly, we came upon an old man and a boy very busily at work in a garden which they were irrigating with water from the spring. Joyful and fearful at the same instant, we stopped still, and they too, probably feeling the same as we, stood there without a word. In course of time the old man said: “Who are you, strangers? Are you sea-gods, or only unlucky men like us? As for ourselves, though we are men and were bred on land, the have become sea-creatures and swim about with this beast which encompasses us, not even knowing for certain what our condition is -- we suppose that we are dead, but trust that we are alive.” To this I replied: “We too are men, my good sir -- newcomers, who were swallowed up yesterday, ship and all: and we set out just now with the notion of finding out how things were in the forest, for it appeared to be very large and thick. But some divinity, it seems, brought us to see you and to discover that we are not the only people shut up in this animal. Do tell us your adventures -- who you are and how you got in here.” But he said he would neither tell us nor question us before giving us what entertainment he could command, and he took us with him to the house. It was a commodious structure, had bunks built in it and was fully furnished in other ways. He set before us vegetables, fruit and fish and poured us out wine as well. When we had had enough, he asked us what had happened to us. I told him about everything from first to last -- the storm, the island, the cruise in the air, the war and all the rest of it up to our descent into the whale.
He expressed huge wonder, and then told us his own story, saying: “By birth, strangers, I am a Cypriote. Setting out from my native land on a trading venture with my boy whom you see and with many servants besides, I began a voyage to Italy, bringing various wares on a great ship, which you no doubt saw wrecked in the mouth of the whale. As far as Sicily we had a fortunate voyage, but there we were caught by a violent wind and driven out into the ocean for three days, where we fell in with the whale, were swallowed up crew and all, and only we two survived, the others being killed. We buried our comrades, built a temple to Poseidon and live this sort of life, raising vegetables and eating fish and nuts. As you see, the forest is extensive, and besides, it contains many grape-vines, which yield the sweetest of wine. No doubt you noticed the spring of beautiful cold water, too. We make our bed of leaves, burn all the wood we want, snare the birds that fly in, and catch fresh fish by going into the gills of the animal. We also bathe there when we care to. Another thing, there is a lake not far off, twenty furlongs in circumference, with all kinds of fish in it, where we swim and sail in a little skiff that I made. It is now twenty-seven years since we were swallowed. Everything else is perhaps endurable, but our neighbours and fellow-countrymen are extremely quarrelsome and unpleasant, being unsociable and savage.” “What!” said I, “are there other people in the whale, too?” “Why, yes, lots of them,” said he; “they are unfriendly and are oddly built. In the western part of the forest, the tail part, live the Broilers, an eel-eyed, lobster-faced people that are warlike and bold, and carnivorous. On one side, by the starboard wall, live the Mergoats,{23} like men above and catfish below: they are not so wicked as the others. To port there are the Crabclaws and the Codheads, who are friends and allies with each other. The interior is inhabited by Clan Crawfish and the Solefeet, good fighters and swift runners. The eastern part, that near the mouth, is mostly uninhabited, as it is subject to inundations of the sea. I live in it, however, paying the Solefeet a tribute of five hundred oysters a year. Such being the nature of the country, it is for you to see how we can fight with all these tribes and how we are to get a living.” “How many are there of them in all?” said I. “More than a thousand,” said he. “What sort of weapons have they?” “Nothing but fishbones,” he said. “Then our best plan,” said I, “would be to meet them in battle, as they are unarmed and we have arms. If we defeat them, we shall live here in peace the rest of our days.”
{23: According to Herodotus (2, 46), [Greek word omitted] was Egyptian for goat; but there is nothing goatish in the Tritonomendetes as Lucian describes them.}
This was resolved on, and we went to the boat and made ready. The cause of war was to be the withholding of the tribute, since the date for it had already arrived. They sent and demanded the tax, and he gave the messengers a contemptuous answer and drove them off. First the Solefeet and Clan Crawfish, incensed at Scintharus -- for that was his name -- came on with a great uproar. Anticipating their attack, we were waiting under arms, having previously posted in our front a squad of twenty-five men in ambush, who had been directed to fall on the enemy when they saw that they had gone by, and this they did. Falling on them in the rear, they cut them down, while we ourselves, twenty-five in number (for Scintharus and his son were in our ranks), met them face to face and, engaging them, ran our hazard with strength and spirit. Finally we routed them and pursued them clear to their dens. The slain on the side of the enemy were one hundred and seventy; on our side, one -- the sailing-master, who was run through the midriff with a mullet-rib. That day and night we bivouacked on the field and made a trophy by setting up the dry spine of a dolphin. On the following day the others, who had heard of it, appeared, with the Broilers, led by Tom Cod, on the right wing, the Codheads on the left, and the Crabclaws in the centre. The Mergoats did not take the field, choosing not to ally themselves with either party. Going out to meet them, we engaged them by the temple of Poseidon with great shouting, and the hollow re-echoed like a cave. Routing them, as they were light-armed, and pursuing them into the forest, we were thenceforth masters of the land. Not long afterwards they sent heralds and were for recovering their dead and conferring about an alliance, but we did not think it best to make terms with them. Indeed, on the following day we marched against them and utterly exterminated them, all but the Mergoats, and they, when they saw what was doing, ran off through the gills and threw themselves into the sea. Occupying the country, which was now clear of the enemy, we dwelt there in peace from that time on, constantly engaging in sports, hunting, tending vines and gathering the fruit of the trees. In short, we resembled men leading a life of luxury and roaming at large in a great prison that they cannot break out of.
For a year and eight months we lived in this way, but on the fifth day of the ninth month, about the second mouth-opening -- for the whale did it once an hour, so that we told time by the openings -- about the second opening, as I said, much shouting and commotion suddenly made itself heard, and what seemed to be commands and oar-beats.{24} Excitedly we crept up to the very mouth of the animal, and standing inside the teeth we saw the most unparallelled of all the sights that ever I saw -- huge men, fully half a furlong in stature, sailing on huge islands as on galleys. Though I know that what I am going to recount savours of the incredible, I shall say it nevertheless. There were islands, long but not very high, and fully a hundred furlongs in circumference, on each of which about a hundred and twenty of those men were cruising, some of whom, sitting along each side of the island one behind the other, were rowing with huge cypress trees for oars -- branches, leaves and all!{25} Aft at the stern, as I suppose you would call it, stood the master on a high hill, holding a bronze tiller five furlongs in length. At the bow, about forty of them under arms were fighting; they were like men in all but their hair, which was fire and blazed up, so that they had no need of plumes.{26} In lieu of sails, the wind struck the forest, which was dense on each of the islands, filled this and carried the island wherever the helmsman would. There were boatswains in command, to keep the oarsmen in time, and the islands moved swiftly under the rowing, like war-galleys.
{24: Compare the description of the sea-fight between Corinth and Corcyra in Thucydides 1, 48.}
{25: Herodotus (2, 156) speaks of a floating island in Egypt.}
{26: Cf. _Iliad_ 5, 4: “And tireless flames did burn on crest and shield.”}
At first we only saw two or three, but later on about six hundred made their appearance. Taking sides, they went to war and had a sea-fight. Many collided with one another bows on, and many were rammed amidships and sunk. Some, grappling one another, put up a stout fight and were slow to cast off, for those stationed at the bows showed all zeal in boarding and slaying: no quarter was given. Instead of iron grapnels they threw aboard one another great devilfish with lines belayed to them, and these gripped the woods and held the island fast. They struck and wounded one another with oysters that would fill a wagon and with hundred-foot sponges. The leader of one side was Aeolocentaur, of the other, Brinedrinker. Their battle evidently came about on account of an act of piracy: Brinedrinker was said to have driven off many herds of dolphins belonging to Aeolocentaur. We knew this because we could hear them abusing one another and calling out the names of their kings. Finally the side of Aeolocentaur won; they sank about a hundred and fifty of the enemy’s islands; and took three more, crews and all; the rest backed water and fled. After pursuing them some distance, they turned back to the wrecks at evening, making prizes of most of them and picking up what belonged to themselves; for on their own side not less than eighty islands had gone down. They also made a trophy of the isle-fight by setting up one of the enemy’s islands on the head of the whale. That night they slept on shipboard around the animal, making their shore lines fast to him and riding at anchor just off him; for they had anchors, large and strong, made of glass.{27} On the following day they performed sacrifice on the whale, buried their friends on him, and sailed off rejoicing and apparently singing hymns of victory. So much for the events of the isle-fight.
{27: Very likely a punning reference to some traveller’s account of wooden [Greek word omitted] anchors.}


» Book II

From that time on, as I could no longer endure the life in the whale and was discontented with the delay, I sought a way of escape. First we determined to dig through the right side and make off, and we made a beginning and tried to cut through. But when we had advanced some five furlongs without getting anywhere, we left off digging and decided to set the forest afire, thinking that in this way the whale could be killed, and in that case our escape would be easy. So we began at the tail end and set it afire. For seven days and seven nights he was unaffected by the burning, but on the eighth and ninth we gathered that he was in a bad way. For instance, he yawned less frequently, and whenever he did yawn he closed his mouth quickly. On the tenth and eleventh day mortification at last set in and he was noisome. On the twelfth we perceived just in time that if someone did not shore his jaws open when he yawned, so that he could not close them again, we stood a chance of being shut up in the dead whale and dying there ourselves. At the last moment, then, we propped the mouth open with great beams and made our boat ready, putting aboard all the water we could and the other provisions. Our sailing-master was to be Scintharus.
On the next day the whale was dead at last. We dragged the boat up, took her through the gaps, made her fast to the teeth and lowered her slowly into the sea. Climbing on the back and sacrificing to Poseidon there by the trophy, we camped for three days, as it was calm. On the fourth day we sailed off, and in so doing met and grounded on many of the dead from the sea-fight, and measured their bodies with amazement. For some days we sailed with a moderate breeze, and then a strong norther blew up and brought on great cold. The entire sea was frozen by it, not just on the surface but to a depth of fully six fathoms, so that we could leave the boat and run on the ice. The wind held and we could not stand it, so we devised an odd remedy -- the proposer of the idea was Scintharus. We dug a very large cave in the water and stopped in it for thirty days, keeping a fire burning and eating the fish that we found in digging. When our provisions at last failed, we came out, hauled up the boat, which had frozen in, spread our canvas and slid, gliding on the ice smoothly and easily, just as if we were sailing. On the fifth day it was warm again, the ice broke up and everything turned to water once more.
After sailing about three hundred furlongs we ran in at a small desert island, where we got water -- which had failed by this time -- and shot two wild bulls, and then sailed away. These bulls did not have their horns on their head but under their eyes, as Momus wanted.{28} Not long afterwards we entered a sea of milk, not of water, and in it a white island, full of grapevines, came in sight. The island was a great solid cheese, as we afterwards learned by tasting it. It was twenty-five furlongs in circumference. The vines were full of grapes, but the liquid which we squeezed from them and drank was milk instead of wine. A temple had been constructed in the middle of the island in honour of Galatea the Nereid, as its inscription indicated. All the time that we stopped in the island the earth was our bread and meat and the milk from the grapes our drink. The ruler of that region was said to be Tyro, daughter of Salmoneus, who after departure from home received this guerdon from Poseidon.{29}
{28: Momus suggested this in order that the animal might see what he was doing with his horns. [This refers to one of Aesop’s fables. R.S.]}
{29: As _gala_ is milk and _tyros_ cheese, the goddess and the queen of the island are fitly chosen.}
After stopping five days on the island we started out on the sixth, with a bit of breeze propelling us over a rippling sea. On the eighth day, by which time we were no longer sailing through the milk but in briny blue water, we came in sight of many men running over the sea, like us in every way, both in shape and in size, except only their feet, which were of cork: that is why they were called Corkfeet, if I am not mistaken. We were amazed to see that they did not go under, but stayed on the top of the waves and went about fearlessly. Some of them came up and greeted us in the Greek language; they said that they were on their way to Cork, their native city. For some distance they travelled with us, running alongside, and then they turned off and went their way, wishing us luck on our voyage.
In a little while many islands came in sight. Near us, to port, was Cork, where the men were going, a city built on a great round cork. At a distance and more to starboard were five islands, very large and high, from which much fire was blazing up. Dead ahead was one that was flat and low-lying, not less than five hundred furlongs off. When at length we were near it, a wonderful breeze blew about us, sweet and fragrant, like the one that, on the word of the historian Herodotus,{30} breathes perfume from Araby the blest. The sweetness that met us was as if it came from roses and narcissi and hyacinths and lilies and violets, from myrrh and laurel and vines in bloom. Delighted with the fragrance and cherishing high hopes after our long toils, we gradually drew near to the island at last. Then we saw many harbours all about it, large and unfretted by beating waves; transparent rivers emptying softly into the sea; meads, too, and woods and songbirds, some of them singing on the shore and many in the branches. A rare, pure atmosphere enfolded the place, and sweet breezes with their blowing stirred the woods gently, so that from the moving branches came a whisper of delightful, unbroken music, like the fluting of Pandean pipes in desert places. Moreover, a confused sound could be heard incessantly, which was not noisy but resembled that made at a drinking-party, when some are playing, others singing and others beating time to the flute or the lyre. Enchanted with all this, we put in, anchored our boat and landed, leaving Scintharus and two of my comrades on board. Advancing through a flowery mead, we came upon the guards and sentinels, who bound us with rosy wreaths -- the strongest fetter that they have -- and led us inland to their ruler. They told us on the way that the island was the one that is called the Isle of the Blest, and that the ruler was the Cretan Rhadamanthus. On being brought before him, we were given fourth place among the people awaiting trial. The first case was that of Ajax, son of Telamon, to decide whether he should be allowed to associate with the heroes or not: he was accused of having gone mad and killed himself. At last, when much had been said, Rhadamanthus gave judgment that for the present he should be given in charge of Hippocrates, the Coan physician, to take the hellebore treatment,{31} and that later on, when he had recovered his wits, he should have a place at the table of the heroes. The second case was a love-affair -- Theseus and Menelaus at law over Helen, to determine which of the two she should live with. Rhadamanthus pronounced that she should live with Menelaus, because he had undergone so much toil and danger on account of his marriage: then too, Theseus had other wives, the Amazon and the daughters of Minos.{32} The third judgment was given in a matter of precedence between Alexander, son of Philip, and Hannibal of Carthage, and the decision was that Alexander outranked Hannibal, so his chair was placed next the elder Cyrus of Persia.{33} We were brought up fourth; and he asked us how it was that we trod on holy ground while still alive, and we told him the whole story. Then he had us removed, pondered for a long time, and consulted with his associates about us. Among many other associates he had Aristides the Just, of Athens. When he had come to a conclusion, sentence was given that for being inquisitive and not staying at home we should be tried after death, but that for the present we might stop a definite time in the island and share the life of the heroes, and then we must be off. They set the length of our stay at not more than seven months.
{30: 3, 113.}
{31: A remedy for madness; Horace, _Satires_ 2, 3, 82.}
{32: Hippolyta; Ariadne and Phaedra.}
{33: Cf. _Dialogues of the Dead_, 25.}
Thereupon our garlands fell away of themselves, and we were set free and taken into the city and to the table of the blessed. The city itself is all of gold and the wall around it of emerald.{34} It has seven gates, all of single planks of cinnamon. The foundations of the city and the ground within its walls are ivory. There are temples of all the gods, built of beryl, and in them great monolithic altars of amethyst, on which they make their great burnt-offerings. Around the city runs a river of the finest myrrh, a hundred royal cubits wide and five deep, so that one can swim in it comfortably. For baths they have large houses of glass, warmed by burning cinnamon; instead of water there is hot dew in the tubs. For clothing they use delicate purple spider-webs. As for themselves, they have no bodies, but are intangible and fleshless, with only shape and figure. Incorporeal as they are, they nevertheless live and move and think and talk. In a word, it would appear that their naked souls go about in the semblance of their bodies. Really, if one did not touch them, he could not tell that what he saw was not a body, for they are like upright shadows, only not black. Nobody grows old, but stays the same age as on coming there. Again, it is neither night among them nor yet very bright day, but the light which is on the country is like the gray morning toward dawn, when the sun has not yet risen. Moreover, they are acquainted with only one season of the year, for it is always spring there and the only wind that blows there is Zephyr. The country abounds in flowers and plants of all kinds, cultivated and otherwise.{35} The grape-vines yield twelve vintages a year, bearing every month; the pomegranates, apples and other fruit-trees were said to bear thirteen times a year, for in one month, their Minoan, they bear twice. Instead of wheat-ears, loaves of bread all baked grow on the tops of the halms, so that they look like mushrooms. In the neighbourhood of the city there are three hundred and sixty-five springs of water, as many of honey, five hundred of myrrh -- much smaller, however -- seven rivers of milk and eight of wine.
{34: Lucian’s city is not necessarily a parody on the New Jerusalem, though the scholiast so understood it.}
{35: Lucian makes a villainous pun here, contrasting _hemeros_ (cultivated) with _skieros_ (fond of darkness), as if the former word meant “fond of daylight” (_hemera_)!}
Their table is spread outside the city in the Elysian Fields, a very beautiful mead with thick woods of all sorts round about it, overshadowing the feasters. The couches they lie on are made of flowers, and they are attended and served by the winds, who, however, do not pour out their wine, for they do not need anyone to do this. There are great trees of the clearest glass around the table, and instead of fruit they bear cups of all shapes and sizes. When anyone comes to table he picks one or two of the cups and puts them at his place. These fill with wine at once, and that is the way they get their drink. Instead of garlands, the nightingales and the other song-birds gather flowers in their bills from the fields hard by and drop them down like snow, flying overhead and singing. Furthermore, the way they are scented is that thick clouds draw up myrrh from the springs and the river, stand over the table and under the gentle manipulation of the winds rain down a delicate dew. At the board they pass their time with poetry and song. For the most part they sing the epics of Homer, who is there himself and shares the revelry, lying at table in the place above Odysseus. Their choruses are of boys and girls, led and accompanied by Eunomus of Locris, Anion of Lesbos, Anacreon and Stesichorus. There can be no doubt about the latter, for I saw him there -- by that time Helen had forgiven him.{36} When they stop singing another chorus appears, composed of swans and swallows and nightingales, and as they sing the whole wood renders the accompaniment, with the winds leading. But the greatest thing that they have for ensuring a good time is that two springs are by the table, one of laughter and the other of enjoyment. They all drink from each of these when the revels begin, and thenceforth enjoy themselves and laugh all the while.
{36: Stesichorus had said harsh words of Helen, and was blinded by Castor and Pollux for his presumption. He recanted in a famous Palinode, of which some lines are still preserved (Plato, _Phaedrus_, 243), and so recovered his eyesight.}
But I desire to mention the famous men whom I saw there. There were all the demigods and the veterans of Troy except Locrian Ajax, the only one, they said, who was being punished in the place of the wicked. Of the barbarians there were both Cyruses, the Scythian Anacharsis, the Thracian Zamolxis and Numa the Italian. In addition, there were Lycurgus of Sparta, Phocion and Tellus of Athens and the wise men, all but Periander. I also saw Socrates, the son of Sophroniscus, chopping logic with Nestor and Palamedes; about him were Hyacinthus of Sparta, Narcissus of Thespiae, Hylas and other handsome lads. It seemed to me that Hyacinthus was his especial favourite, for at any rate he refuted him most. It was said that Rhadamanthus was angry at Socrates and had often threatened to banish him from the island if he kept up his nonsense and would not quit his irony and be merry. Plato alone was not there: it was said that he was living in his imaginary city under the constitution and the laws that he himself wrote. The followers of Aristippus and Epicurus were in the highest favour among the heroes because they are pleasant and agreeable and jolly good fellows. Aesop the Phrygian was also there -- they have him for a jester. Diogenes the Cynic had so changed his ways that he not only married Lais the courtesan, but often got up and danced and indulged in tomfoolery when he had had too much. None of the Stoics was there -- they were said to be still on the way up the steep hill of virtue. With regard to Chrysippus, we heard tell that he is not permitted to set foot on the island until he submits himself to the hellebore treatment for the fourth time.{37} They said that the Academicians wanted to come but were still holding off and debating, for they could not arrive at a conclusion even on the question whether such an island existed. Then too I suppose they feared to have Rhadamanthus judge them, as they themselves had abolished standards of judgment. It was said, however, that many of them had started to follow people coming thither, but fell behind through their slowness, being constitutionally unable to arrive at anything, and so turned back half-way.
{37: See the _Philosophers for Sale_ for another jest at Chrysippus’ insanity.}
These were the most conspicuous of those present. They render especial honours to Achilles and after him to Theseus. About love-making their attitude is such that they bill-and-coo openly, in plain sight of everyone, without any discrimination, and think no shame of it at all. Socrates, the only exception, used to protest that he was above suspicion in his relations with young persons, but everyone held him guilty of perjury. In fact, Hyacinthus and Narcissus often said that they knew better, but he persisted in his denial. They all have their wives in common and nobody is jealous of his neighbour; in this point they out-Plato Plato. Complaisance is the universal rule.
Hardly two or three days had passed before I went up to Homer the poet when we were both at leisure, and questioned him about everything. “Above all,” said I, “where do you come from? This point in particular is being investigated even yet at home.” “I am not unaware,” said he, “that some think me a Chian, some a Smyrniote and many a Colophonian. As a matter of fact, I am a Babylonian, and among my fellow-countrymen my name was not Homer but Tigranes. Later on, when I was a hostage (_homeros_) among the Greeks, I changed my name.” I went on to enquire whether the bracketed lines had been written by him, and he asserted that they were all his own: consequently I held the grammarians Zenodotus and Aristarchus guilty of pedantry in the highest degree. Since he had answered satisfactorily on these points, I next asked him why he began with the wrath of Achilles; and he said that it just came into his head that way, without any study. Moreover, I wanted to know whether he wrote the Odyssey before the Iliad, as most people say: he said no. That he was not blind, as they say, I understood at once -- I saw it, and so had no need to ask. Often again at other times I would do this when I saw him at leisure; I would go and make enquiries of him and he would give me a cordial answer to everything, particularly after the lawsuit that he won, for a charge of libel had been brought against him by Thersites because of the way he had ridiculed him in the poem, and the case was won by Homer, with Odysseus for his lawyer.
At about this time arrived Pythagoras of Samos who had undergone seven transformations, had lived in seven bodies and had now ended the migrations of his soul. All his right side was of gold. Judgment was pronounced that he should become a member of their community, but when I left the point was still at issue whether he ought to be called Pythagoras or Euphorbus. Empedocles came too, all burned and his body completely cooked,{38} but he was not received in spite of his many entreaties.
{38: From his leap into the crater of Aetna.}
As time went on their games came round, the Games of the Dead. The referees were Achilles, serving for the fifth time, and Theseus for the seventh. The full details would make a long story, but I shall tell the principal things that they did. In wrestling the winner was Caranus, the descendant of Heracles, who defeated Odysseus for the championship. The boxing was a draw between Areius the Egyptian, who is buried at Corinth, and Epeius. For combined boxing and wrestling they offer no prizes. In the foot-race I do not remember who won and in poetry, Homer was really far the best man, but Hesiod won. The prize in each case was a crown that was plaited of peacock feathers.
Hardly had the games been concluded when word came that those who were under punishment in the place of the wicked had burst their bonds, had overpowered their guard, and were advancing on the island: that they were under the leadership of Phalaris of Acragas, Busiris the Egyptian, Diomed of Thrace, and Sciron and Pityocamptes. When Rhadamanthus heard of this he mustered the heroes on the shore. They were led by Theseus, Achilles and Ajax, the son of Telamon, who by this time had recovered his wits. They engaged and fought, and the heroes won. Achilles contributed most to their success, but Socrates, who was stationed on the right wing, was brave, too -- far more so than when he fought at Delium in his lifetime. When four of the enemy came at him he did not run away or change countenance. For this they afterwards gave him a special reward, a beautiful great park in the suburbs, where he used to gather his comrades and dispute: he named the place the Academy of the Dead. Arresting the losers and putting them in irons, they sent them off to be punished still more severely than before. An account of this battle was written by Homer, and as I was leaving he gave me the book to take to the people at home, but later I lost it along with everything else. The poem began:

  _This time sing me, O Muse, of the shades of the heroes in battle!_

But to return -- they cooked beans,{39} as is their custom when they are successful at war, had a feast in honour of the victory and made a great holiday. Pythagoras was the only one who did not take part in it; he sat by himself and went dinnerless because he detested beans.
{39: An allusion to the Pyanepsia, the Athenian Beanfeast.}
Six months had passed and it was about the middle of the seventh when sedition arose. Cinyras, the son of Scintharus, a tall and handsome lad, had long been in love with Helen, and it was no secret that she herself was madly enamoured of the boy. For instance, they often winked to one another at table, drank to each other and got up together and wandered about the wood. Well, one fine day through love and despair Cinyras determined to rape Helen -- she agreed to it -- and go to one of the islands in the offing, either Cork or Cheesie. As accomplices they had long ago taken on three of the most reckless of my comrades; but Cinyras did not inform his father, for he knew that he would not let him do it. When they had come to a decision, they carried out their stratagem. It was at nightfall, and I was not on hand, as I chanced to be taking a nap under the table. Without the knowledge of the rest they carried Helen off and put to sea in haste. About midnight, when Menelaus woke up, and found that his wife was not in bed, he made a great stir and took his brother and went to King Rhadamanthus. But as day began to break the lookouts said that they saw the ship far out at sea. Then Rhadamanthus put fifty of the heroes aboard a ship made of a single log of asphodel and ordered them to give chase. Rowing with a will, they overtook them about noon, just as they were entering the milky place in the ocean near Cheesie -- that is all they lacked of escaping! Securing the ship with a hawser of roses, they sailed home. Helen cried and hid her head for shame. As to Cinyras and the rest, first Rhadamanthus asked them if they had any other accomplices, and they said no; then he had them secured by the offending member and sent them away to the place of the wicked, after they had been first scourged with mallow. The heroes voted, too, that we be dismissed from the island before our time was up, remaining only till the next day.
Thereupon I began to cry aloud and weep because I had to leave such blessings behind me and resume my wanderings. But they cheered me up, saying that before many years I should come back to them again, and they even pointed out to me my future chair and couch, close to the best people. I went to Rhadamanthus and earnestly besought him to tell me what would happen and indicate my course. He said that I should reach my native land in spite of many wanderings and dangers, but refused to tell the time of my return. However, pointing out the islands near by -- there were five in sight and a sixth in the distance -- “These,” said he, “are the Isles of the Wicked, here close at hand, from which you see all the smoke arising: the sixth yonder is the City of Dreams. Next comes the island of Calypso, but you cannot see it yet. When you have sailed by these, you will finally come to the great continent opposite the one which your people inhabit. Then at last, after you have had many adventures and have travelled through all sorts of countries and lived among unfriendly men, in course of time you will reach the other continent.”
With these words he plucked a root of mallow from the ground and handed it to me, telling me to pray to it in my greatest straits. And he advised me if ever I reached this country, neither to stir the fire with a sword-blade nor to eat lupines nor to make love to anyone over eighteen,{40} saying that if I bore these points in mind I might have good hopes of getting back to the island.
{40: The first is a real Pythagorean precept, or what passed for such (Plutarch, _Moralia_ 1, 17); the other two are parodies.}
Well, I made preparations for the voyage, and when the time came, joined them at the feast. On the next day I went to the poet Homer and begged him to compose me a couplet to carve up, and when he had done so, I set up a slab of beryl near the harbour and had the couplet carved on it. It was:

  _One Lucian, whom the blessed gods befriend,
  Beheld what’s here, and home again did wend._

I stayed that day, too, and put to sea on the next, escorted by the heroes. At that juncture Odysseus came to me without the knowledge of Penelope and gave me a letter to carry to Ogygia Island, to Calypso. Rhadamanthus sent the pilot Nauplius with me, so that if we touched at the islands no one might arrest us, thinking we were putting in on another errand.
Forging ahead, we had passed out of the fragrant atmosphere when of a sudden a terrible odour greeted us as of asphalt, sulphur, and pitch burning together, and a vile, insufferable stench as of roasting human flesh: the atmosphere was murky and foggy, and a pitchy dew distilled from it. Likewise we heard the noise of scourges and the wailing of many men. The other islands we did not touch at, but the one on which we landed was precipitous and sheer on all sides; it was roughened with rocks and stony places, and there was neither tree nor water in it. We crawled up the cliffs, however, and went ahead in a path full of thorns and calthrops, finding the country very ugly. On coming to the enclosure and the place of punishment, first of all we wondered at the nature of the region. The ground itself was all sown with sword blades and calthrops, and around it flowed three rivers, one of mud, the second of blood and the inmost one of fire. The latter was very large, and impossible to cross: it ran like water and undulated like the sea, and it contained many fish, some similar to torches, and some, a smaller variety, to live coals. They called them candlefish. There was a single narrow way leading in, past all the rivers, and the warder set there was Timon of Athens. We got through, however, and with Nauplius for our conductor we saw many kings undergoing punishment, and many commoners too. Some of them we even recognized, and we saw Cinyras triced up as aforesaid in the smoke of a slow fire. The guides told the life of each, and the crimes for which they were being punished; and the severest punishment of all fell to those who told lies while in life and those who had written what was not true, among whom were Ctesias of Cnidos, Herodotus and many more. On seeing them, I had good hopes for the future, for I have never told a lie that I know of. Well, I turned back to the ship quickly, for I could not endure the sight, said good-bye to Nauplius, and sailed away.
After a short time the Isle of Dreams came in sight close by, faint and uncertain to the eye. It had itself some likeness to a dream, for as we approached it receded and retired and retreated to a greater distance. Overtaking it at length and sailing into the harbour called Sleep, we landed near the ivory gates, where the sanctuary of the Cock is, about dusk, and on entering the city, we saw many dreams of all sorts. But first I desire to speak of the city itself, since no one else has written about it, and Homer, the only one to mention it at all, was not quite accurate in what he said.{41} On all sides of it is a wood, in which the trees are tall poppies and mandragoras, and they have a great number of bats in them; for there is no other winged thing in the island. A river flows near which they call Sleepwalker, and there are two springs by the gates, named Soundly and Eight-hours. The wall of the city is high and parti-coloured, very like a rainbow in tint. The gates in it are not two, as Homer says, but four. Two face Slowcoach Plain, one of which is of iron and the other of earthenware; through these, it is said, the fearful, murderous, revolting dreams go out. The other two face the harbour and the sea, one of which is of horn and the other, through which we came in, of ivory. As one enters the city, on the right is the temple of Night, for the gods they worship most are Night and the Cock, whose sanctuary is built near the harbour. On the left is the palace of Sleep, who rules among them and has appointed two satraps or lieutenants, Nightmare, son of Causeless, and Rich, son of Fancy. In the centre of the square is a spring which they call Drowsimere, and close to it are two temples, that of Falsehood and that of Truth. There too is their holy of holies and their oracle, which Antiphon, the interpreter of dreams, presided over as prophet, having had this office from Sleep. As to the dreams themselves, they differ from one another both in nature and in looks. Some were tall, handsome and well-proportioned, while others were small and ugly; and some were rich, I thought, while others were humble and beggarly. There were winged and portentous dreams among them, and there were others dressed up as if for a carnival, being clothed to represent kings and gods and different characters of the sort. We actually recognised many of them, whom we had seen long ago at home. These came up to us and greeted us like old acquaintances, took us with them, put us to sleep and entertained us very splendidly and hospitably. They treated us like lords in every way, and even promised to make us kings and nabobs. A few of them actually took us off home, gave us a sight of our friends and families and brought us back the same day. For thirty days and thirty nights we stopped with them and had a fine time -- sleeping! Then of a sudden a great thunder-clap came; we woke up, sprang out of bed and put to sea as soon as we had laid in supplies.
{41: _Odyssey_ 19, 560 ff.}
On the third day out from there we touched at the island of Ogygia and landed. But first I opened the letter and read what was in it. It was:

    “Odysseus to Calypso, greeting.
    “Soon after I built the raft and sailed away from you I was shipwrecked, and with the help of Leucothea managed to reach the land of the Phaeacians in safety. They sent me home, and there I found that my wife had a number of suitors who were living on the fat of the land at our house. I killed them all, and was afterwards slain by Telegonus, my son by Circe. Now I am on the Isle of the Blest, thoroughly sorry to have given up my life with you and the immortality which you offered me. Therefore, if I get a chance, I shall run away and come to you.”

In addition to this, the letter said that she was to entertain us. On going a short way from the sea I found the cave, which was as Homer described it,{42} and found Calypso herself working wool. When she had taken the letter and read it, she wept a long time at first, and then she asked us in to enjoy her hospitality, gave us a splendid feast and enquired about Odysseus and Penelope -- how she looked and whether she was prudent, as Odysseus used to boast in old times.{43} We made her such answers as we thought would please her.
{42: _Odyssey_ 5, 55 ff.}
{43: _Odyssey_ 5, 201 ff.}
After that, we went back to the ship and slept beside it on the shore, and early in the morning we put to sea in a rising wind. We were storm-tossed for two days, and on the third we fell in with the Pumpkin-pirates. They are savages from the neighbouring islands who prey on passing sailors. They have large boats of pumpkin, sixty cubits long; for after drying a pumpkin they hollow it out, take out the insides and go sailing in it, using reeds for masts and a pumpkin-leaf for a sail. They attacked us with two crews and gave us battle, wounding many of us by hitting us with pumpkin-seeds instead of stones. After fighting for a long time on even terms, about noon we saw the Nut-sailors coming up astern of the Pumpkin-pirates. They were enemies to one another, as they showed by their actions; for when the Pumpkin-pirates noticed them coming up, they neglected us and faced about and fought with them. But in the meantime we hoisted our canvas and fled, leaving them fighting. It was evident that the Nut-sailors would win, as they were in greater numbers -- they had five crews -- and fought from stouter ships. Their boats were the halves of empty nutshells, each of which measured fifteen fathoms in length.
When we had lost them from sight, we attended to the wounded, and thereafter we kept under arms most of the time, always looking for attacks. And we did not look in vain. In fact, the sun had not yet gone down when from a desert island there came out against us about twenty men riding on huge dolphins, who were pirates like the others. The dolphins carried them securely and plunged and neighed like horses. When they were close by, they separated and threw at us from both sides with dry cuttle-fish and crabs’ eyes. But when we let fly at them with spears and arrows, they could not hold their ground, but fled to the island, most of them wounded.
About midnight, while it was calm, we unexpectedly ran aground on an enormous kingfisher’s nest; really, it was sixty furlongs in circumference. The female was sailing on it, keeping her eggs warm, and she was not much smaller than the nest -- in fact, as she started up she almost sunk the ship with the wind of her wings. She flew off, however, uttering a plaintive cry. We landed when day began to break, and observed that the nest was like a great raft, built of huge trees. There were five hundred eggs in it, every one of them bigger than a Chian wine-jar, and the chicks were already visible inside them and were chirping. We cut open one of the eggs with axes and took from the shell a featherless chick fatter than twenty vultures.
When we had sailed a distance of two hundred furlongs from the nest, great and wonderful signs manifested themselves to us. The gooseneck{44} suddenly grew feathers and started cackling, the sailing-master, Scintharus, who was already bald, became the owner of long hair, and what was strangest of all, the ship’s mast budded, branched, and bore fruit at the summit! The fruit consisted of figs and black raisin-grapes, which were not yet ripe.{45} On seeing this, we were disturbed, as well we might be, and offered a prayer to the gods on account of the strangeness of the manifestation. We had not yet gone five hundred furlongs when we saw a very large, thick forest of pines and cypresses. We thought it was land, but in reality it was a bottomless sea overgrown with rootless trees, in spite of which the trees stood up motionless and straight, as if they were floating. On drawing near and forming an idea of the situation, we were in a quandary what to do, for it was not possible to sail between the trees, they being thick and close together, nor did it seem easy to turn back. Climbing the tallest tree, I looked to see how things were on the other side, and I saw that the forest extended for fifty stades or a little more, and that another ocean lay beyond. So we resolved to lift the ship on to the tree-tops, which were thick, and cross over, if we could, to the farther side; and that is what we did. We made her fast to a large rope, climbed the trees and pulled her up with much ado. Setting her on the branches and spreading our canvas, we sailed just as if we were at sea, carried along by the force of the wind. At that juncture a line of the poet Antimachus came into my head; he says somewhere or other:
{44: In ancient ships the gooseneck was an ornament on the stem, or (as here) on the stern. Nowadays it is a device for fastening a spar to a mast.}
{45: A parody on the experience of the pirates who carried off Dionysus (_Homeric Hymns_ 7, 38).}

  _“And unto them their forest cruise pursuing.”_

We managed the wood in spite of everything and reached the water. Lowering the ship again in the same way we sailed through pure, clear water, until we came to a great crevasse made by the water dividing, like the cracks that one often sees in the earth, made by earthquakes. Though we got in the sails, the ship was slow to lose headway and so came near being engulfed. Peering over the edge, we saw a precipice of fully a thousand furlongs, most frightful and unnatural -- the water stood there as if cut apart! But as we looked about us we saw on the right at no great distance a bridge thrown across, which was of water, joining the surfaces of the two seas and flowing from one to the other. Rowing up, therefore, we ran into the stream and by great effort got across, though we thought we should never do it.
Then we came to a smooth sea and an island of no great size that was easily accessible and was inhabited. It was peopled by savages, the Bullheads, who have horns in the style that the Minotaur is represented at home. Landing, we went up country to get water and food if we could, for we no longer had any. Water we found close by, but there was nothing else to be seen, though we heard a great bellowing not far off. Thinking it was a herd of cattle, we went ahead cautiously and came upon the men of whom I spoke. On seeing us, they gave chase, and captured three of my comrades, but the rest of us made our escape to the sea. Then, however, we all armed ourselves -- it did not seem right to let our friends go unavenged -- and fell on the Bullheads while they were portioning out the flesh of the men they had slain. We put them all to flight and gave chase, killing about fifty and taking two alive: then we turned back to the ship with our prisoners. We found no food, though. The rest therefore urged that the captives be killed; I did not approve of this, however, but put them in irons and kept them under guard until ambassadors came from the Bullheads, asking for them and offering a ransom. We understood them because they made signs and bellowed plaintively as if in entreaty. The ransom was a number of cheeses, dried fish, onions, and four does, each of which had only three feet, for while they had two behind, the forefeet had grown together. In exchange for all this we surrendered the captives, and after stopping there a single day we put to sea.
Already we began to see fish, birds flew by and all the other signs that land was near made their appearance. In a little while we saw men who were following a novel mode of sailing, being at once sailors and ships. Let me tell you how they did it: they lay on their backs on the water, hoisted their jury-masts, which are sizeable,{*} spread sail on them, held the clews in their hands, and were off and away as soon as the wind struck them. Others came next who sat on corks and had a pair of dolphins hitched up, driving them and guiding them with reins; in moving ahead, the dolphins drew the corks along. They neither offered us harm nor ran away from us, but drove along fearlessly and peacefully, wondering at the shape of our boat and examining her from all sides.
{*: The translation by Hickes tells us what the men use for their “jury-masts.” [R.S.]}
In the evening we touched at another island of no great size. It was inhabited by women -- or so we thought -- who spoke Greek, and they came up to us, welcomed and embraced us. They were got up just like courtesans and were all beautiful and young, with tunics that swept on the ground. The island was called Witchery, and the city Watertown.{46} Each of the women took one of us home with her and made him her guest. But I excused myself for a moment -- I had misgivings -- and on looking about rather carefully, saw many human bones and skulls lying there. To make an outcry, call my comrades together and arm ourselves did not seem best to me, but I fetched out my mallow and prayed to it earnestly that I might escape the ills that beset me. After a little while, as my hostess was waiting on me, I saw that her legs were not a woman’s but those of an ass. Then I drew my sword, caught and bound her and questioned her about the whole thing. Against her will she told me that they were women of the sea, called Asslegs and that they fed on the strangers that visited them. “When we have made them drunk,” said she, “we go to bed with them and attack them in their sleep.” On hearing this, I left her there tied up, and myself went up to the housetop and cried out and called my comrades together. When they had come, I told them everything, showed them the bones and led them in to the woman who was tied up, but she immediately turned to water and disappeared. Nevertheless I thrust my sword into the water as a test, and the water turned to blood.
{46: Both names are uncertain in the Greek.}
With all speed we went back to the ship and sailed away. When the light of day began to show, we saw land and judged it to be the world opposite the one which we inhabit. After doing homage and offering prayer, we took thought for the future. Some of us proposed just to land and then turn back again, others to leave the boat there, go into the interior and see what the inhabitants were like. While we were debating this, a violent storm struck the boat, dashed it ashore and wrecked it, and we ourselves had much trouble in swimming out with our arms and anything else that we could catch up.
Thus far I have told you what happened to me until I reached the other world, first at sea, then during my voyage among the islands and in the air, then in the whale, and after we left it, among the heroes and the dreams, and finally among the Bullheads and the Asslegs. What happened in the other world I shall tell you in the succeeding books.{47}
{47: The biggest lie of all, as a disgruntled Greek scribe remarks in the margin!}


» Lucian’s True History
Translated by Francis Hickes

» Lucian: His True History

Even as champions and wrestlers and such as practise the strength and agility of body are not only careful to retain a sound constitution of health, and to hold on their ordinary course of exercise, but sometimes also to recreate themselves with seasonable intermission, and esteem it as a main point of their practice; so I think it necessary for scholars and such as addict themselves to the study of learning, after they have travelled long in the perusal of serious authors, to relax a little the intention of their thoughts, that they may be more apt and able to endure a continued course of study.
And this kind of repose will be the more conformable, and fit their purpose better, if it be employed in the reading of such works as shall not only yield a bare content by the pleasing and comely composure of them, but shall also give occasion of some learned speculation to the mind, which I suppose I have effected in these books of mine: wherein not only the novelty of the subject, nor the pleasingness of the project, may tickle the reader with delight, nor to hear so many notorious lies delivered persuasively and in the way of truth, but because everything here by me set down doth in a comical fashion glance at some or other of the old poets, historiographers, and philosophers, which in their writings have recorded many monstrous and intolerable untruths, whose names I would have quoted down, but that I knew the reading would bewray them to you.
Ctesias, the son of Ctesiochus, the Cnidian, wrote of the region of the Indians and the state of those countries, matters which he neither saw himself, nor ever heard come from the mouth of any man. Iambulus also wrote many strange miracles of the great sea, which all men knew to be lies and fictions, yet so composed that they want not their delight: and many others have made choice of the like argument, of which some have published their own travels and peregrinations, wherein they have described the greatness of beasts, the fierce condition of men, with their strange and uncouth manner of life: but the first father and founder of all this foolery was Homer’s Ulysses, who tells a long tale to Alcinöus of the servitude of the winds, and of wild men with one eye in their foreheads that fed upon raw flesh, of beasts with many heads, and the transformation of his friends by enchanted potions, all which he made the silly Phaeakes believe for great sooth.
This coming to my perusal, I could not condemn ordinary men for lying, when I saw it in request amongst them that would be counted philosophical persons: yet could not but wonder at them, that, writing so manifest lies, they should not think to be taken with the manner; and this made me also ambitious to leave some monument of myself behind me, that I might not be the only man exempted from this liberty of lying: and because I had no matter of verity to employ my pen in (for nothing hath befallen me worth the writing), I turned my style to publish untruths, but with an honester mind than others have done: for this one thing I confidently pronounce for a truth, that I lie: and this, I hope, may be an excuse for all the rest, when I confess what I am faulty in: for I write of matters which I neither saw nor suffered, nor heard by report from others, which are in no being, nor possible ever to have a beginning. Let no man therefore in any case give any credit to them.
Disanchoring on a time from the pillars of Hercules, the wind fitting me well for my purpose, I thrust into the West Ocean. The occasion that moved me to take such a voyage in hand was only a curiosity of mind, a desire of novelties, and a longing to learn out the bounds of the ocean, and what people inhabit the farther shore: for which purpose I made plentiful provision of victuals and fresh water, got fifty companions of the same humour to associate me in my travels, furnished myself with store of munition, gave a round sum of money to an expert pilot that could direct us in our course, and new rigged and repaired a tall ship strongly to hold a tedious and difficult journey.
Thus sailed we forward a day and a night with a prosperous wind, and as long as we had any sight of land, made no great haste on our way; but the next morrow about sun rising the wind blew high and the waves began to swell and a darkness fell upon us, so that we could not see to strike our sails, but gave our ship over to the wind and weather; thus were we tossed in this tempest the space of threescore and nineteen days together. On the fourscorth day the sun upon a sudden brake out, and we descried not far off us an island full of mountains and woods, about the which the seas did not rage so boisterously, for the storm was now reasonably well calmed: there we thrust in and went on shore and cast ourselves upon the ground, and so lay a long time, as utterly tired with our misery at sea: in the end we arose up and divided ourselves: thirty we left to guard our ship: myself and twenty more went to discover the island, and had not gone above three furlongs from the sea through a wood, but we saw a brazen pillar erected, whereupon Greek letters were engraven, though now much worn and hard to be discerned, importing, “Thus far travelled Hercules and Bacchus.” There were also near unto the place two portraitures cut out in a rock, the one of the quantity of an acre of ground, the other less, which made me imagine the lesser to be Bacchus and the other Hercules: and giving them due adoration, we proceeded on our journey, and far we had not gone but we came to a river, the stream whereof seemed to run with as rich wine as any is made in Chios, and of a great breadth, in some places able to bear a ship, which made me to give the more credit to the inscription upon the pillar, when I saw such apparent signs of Bacchus’s peregrination.
We then resolved to travel up the stream to find whence the river had his original, and when we were come to the head, no spring at all appeared, but mighty great vine-trees of infinite number, which from their roots distilled pure wine which made the river run so abundantly: the stream was also well stored with fish, of which we took a few, in taste and colour much resembling wine, but as many as ate of them fell drunk upon it; for when they were opened and cut up, we found them to be full of lees: afterwards we mixed some fresh water fish with them, which allayed the strong taste of the wine. We then crossed the stream where we found it passable, and came among a world of vines of incredible number, which towards the earth had firm stocks and of a good growth; but the tops of them were women, from the hip upwards, having all their proportion perfect and complete; as painters picture out Daphne, who was turned into a tree when she was overtaken by Apollo; at their fingers’ ends sprung out branches full of grapes, and the hair of their heads was nothing else but winding wires and leaves, and clusters of grapes. When we were come to them, they saluted us and joined hands with us, and spake unto us some in the Lydian and some in the Indian language, but most of them in Greek: they also kissed us with their mouths, but he that was so kissed fell drunk, and was not his own man a good while after: they could not abide to have any fruit pulled from them, but would roar and cry out pitifully if any man offered it. Some of them desired to have carnal mixture with us, and two of our company were so bold as to entertain their offer, and could never afterwards be loosed from them, but were knit fast together at their nether parts, from whence they grew together and took root together, and their fingers began to spring out with branches and crooked wires as if they were ready to bring out fruit: whereupon we forsook them and fled to our ships, and told the company at our coming what had betide unto us, how our fellows were entangled, and of their copulation with the vines. Then we took certain of our vessels and filled them, some with water and some with wine out of the river, and lodged for that night near the shore.
On the morrow we put to sea again, the wind serving us weakly, but about noon, when we had lost sight of the island, upon a sudden a whirlwind caught us, which turned our ship round about, and lifted us up some three thousand furlongs into the air, and suffered us not to settle again into the sea, but we hung above ground, and were carried aloft with a mighty wind which filled our sails strongly. Thus for seven days’ space and so many nights were we driven along in that manner, and on the eighth day we came in view of a great country in the air, like to a shining island, of a round proportion, gloriously glittering with light, and approaching to it, we there arrived, and took land, and surveying the country, we found it to be both inhabited and husbanded: and as long as the day lasted we could see nothing there, but when night was come many other islands appeared unto us, some greater and some less, all of the colour of fire, and another kind of earth underneath, in which were cities and seas and rivers and woods and mountains, which we conjectured to be the earth by us inhabited: and going further into the land, we were met withal and taken by those kind of people which they call Hippogypians. These Hippogypians are men riding upon monstrous vultures, which they use instead of horses: for the vultures there are exceeding great, every one with three heads apiece: you may imagine their greatness by this, for every feather in their wings was bigger and longer than the mast of a tall ship: their charge was to fly about the country, and all the strangers they found to bring them to the king: and their fortune was then to seize upon us, and by them we were presented to him. As soon as he saw us, he conjectured by our habit what countrymen we were, and said, Are not you, strangers, Grecians? which when we affirmed, And how could you make way, said he, through so much air as to get hither?
Then we delivered the whole discourse of our fortunes to him; whereupon he began to tell us likewise of his own adventures, how that he also was a man, by name Endymion, and rapt up long since from the earth as he was asleep, and brought hither, where he was made king of the country, and said it was that region which to us below seemed to be the moon; but he bade us be of good cheer and fear no danger, for we should want nothing we stood in need of: and if the war he was now in hand withal against the sun succeeded fortunately, we should live with him in the highest degree of happiness. Then we asked of him what enemies he had, and the cause of the quarrel: and he answered, Phaethon, the king of the inhabitants of the sun (for that is also peopled as well as the moon), hath made war against us a long time upon this occasion: I once assembled all the poor people and needy persons within my dominions, purposing to send a colony to inhabit the Morning Star, because the country was desert and had nobody dwelling in it. This Phaethon envying, crossed me in my design, and sent his Hippomyrmicks to meet with us in the midway, by whom we were surprised at that time, being not prepared for an encounter, and were forced to retire: now therefore my purpose is once again to denounce war and publish a plantation of people there: if therefore you will participate with us in our expedition, I will furnish you every one with a prime vulture and all armour answerable for service, for to-morrow we must set forwards. With all our hearts, said I, if it please you. Then were we feasted and abode with him, and in the morning arose to set ourselves in order of battle, for our scouts had given us knowledge that the enemy was at hand.
Our forces in number amounted to an hundred thousand, besides such as bare burthens and engineers, and the foot forces and the strange aids: of these, fourscore thousand were Hippogypians, and twenty thousand that rode upon Lachanopters, which is a mighty great fowl, and instead of feathers covered thick over with wort leaves; but their wing feathers were much like the leaves of lettuces. After them were placed the Cenchrobolians and the Scorodomachians: there came also to aid us from the Bear Star thirty thousand Psyllotoxotans, and fifty thousand Anemodromians. These Psyllotoxotans ride upon great fleas, of which they have their denomination, for every flea among them is as big as a dozen elephants: the Anemodromians are footmen, yet flew in the air without feathers in this manner: every man had a large mantle reaching down to his foot, which the wind blowing against, filled it like a sail, and they were carried along as if they had been boats: the most part of these in fight were targeteers. It was said also that there were expected from the stars over Cappadocia threescore and ten thousand Struthobalanians and five thousand Hippogeranians, but I had no sight of them, for they were not yet come, and therefore I durst write nothing, though wonderful and incredible reports were given out of them. This was the number of Endymion’s army; the furniture was all alike; their helmets of bean hulls, which are great with them and very strong; their breastplates all of lupins cut into scales, for they take the shells of lupins, and fastening them together, make breastplates of them which are impenetrable and as hard as any horn: their shields and swords like to ours in Greece: and when the time of battle was come, they were ordered in this manner. The right wing was supplied by the Hippogypians, where the king himself was in person with the choicest soldiers in the army, among whom we also were ranged: the Lachanopters made the left wing, and the aids were placed in the main battle as every man’s fortune fell. The foot, which in number were about six thousand myriads, were disposed of in this manner: there are many spiders in those parts of mighty bigness, every one in quantity exceeding one of the Islands Cyclades: these were appointed to spin a web in the air between the Moon and the Morning Star, which was done in an instant, and made a plain champaign upon which the foot forces were planted, who had for their leader Nycterion, the son of Eudianax, and two other associates.
But of the enemy’s side the left wing consisted of the Hippomyrmicks, and among them Phaethon himself: these are beasts of huge bigness and winged, carrying the resemblance of our emmets, but for their greatness: for those of the largest size were of the quantity of two acres, and not only the riders supplied the place of soldiers, but they also did much mischief with their horns: they were in number fifty thousand. In the right wing were ranged the Aeroconopes, of which there were also about fifty thousand, all archers riding upon great gnats. Then followed the Aerocardakes, who were light armed and footmen, but good soldiers, casting out of slings afar off huge great turnips, and whosoever was hit with them lived not long after, but died with the stink that proceeded from their wounds: it is said they use to anoint their bullets with the poison of mallows. After them were placed the Caulomycetes, men-at-arms and good at hand strokes, in number about fifty thousand: they are called Caulomycetes because their shields were made of mushrooms and their spears of the stalks of the herb asparagus. Near unto them were placed the Cynobalanians, that were sent from the Dogstar to aid him: these were men with dogs’ faces, riding upon winged acorns: but the slingers that should have come out of _Via Lactea_, and the Nephelocentaurs came too short of these aids, for the battle was done before their arrival, so that they did them no good: and indeed the slingers came not at all, wherefore they say Phaethon in displeasure over-ran their country.
These were the forces that Phaethon brought into the field: and when they were joined in battle, after the signal was given, and when the asses on either side had brayed (for these are to them instead of trumpets), the fight began, and the left wing of the Heliotans, or Sun soldiers, fled presently and would not abide to receive the charge of the Hippogypians, but turned their backs immediately, and many were put to the sword: but the right wing of theirs were too hard for our left wing, and drove them back till they came to our footmen, who joining with them, made the enemies there also turn their backs and fly, especially when they found their own left wing to be overthrown. Thus were they wholly discomfited on all hands; many were taken prisoners, and many slain; much blood was spilt; some fell upon the clouds, which made them look of a red colour, as sometimes they appear to us about sun-setting; some dropped down upon the earth, which made me suppose it was upon some such occasion that Homer thought Jupiter rained blood for the death of his son Sarpedon. Returning from the pursuit, we erected two trophies: one for the fight on foot, which we placed upon the spiders’ web: the other for the fight in the air, which we set up upon the clouds. As soon as this was done, news came to us by our scouts that the Nephelocentaurs were coming on, which indeed should have come to Phaethon before the fight. And when they drew so near unto us that we could take full view of them, it was a strange sight to behold such monsters, composed of flying horses and men: that part which resembled mankind, which was from the waist upwards, did equal in greatness the Rhodian Colossus, and that which was like a horse was as big as a great ship of burden: and of such multitude that I was fearful to set down their number lest it might be taken for a lie: and for their leader they had the Sagittarius out of the Zodiac. When they heard that their friends were foiled, they sent a messenger to Phaethon to renew the fight: whereupon they set themselves in array, and fell upon the Selenitans or the Moon soldiers that were troubled, and disordered in following the chase, and scattered in gathering the spoils, and put them all to flight, and pursued the king into his city, and killed the greatest part of his birds, overturned the trophies he had set up, and overcame the whole country that was spun by the spiders. Myself and two of my companions were taken alive.
When Phaethon himself was come they set up other trophies in token of victory, and on the morrow we were carried prisoners into the Sun, our arms bound behind us with a piece of the cobweb: yet would they by no means lay any siege to the city, but returned and built up a wall in the midst of the air to keep the light of the Sun from falling upon the Moon, and they made it a double wall, wholly compact of clouds, so that a manifest eclipse of the Moon ensued, and all things detained in perpetual night: wherewith Endymion was so much oppressed that he sent ambassadors to entreat the demolishing of the building, and beseech him that he would not damn them to live in darkness, promising to pay him tribute, to be his friend and associate, and never after to stir against him. Phaethon’s council twice assembled to consider upon this offer, and in their first meeting would remit nothing of their conceived displeasure, but on the morrow they altered their minds to these terms. “The Heliotans and their colleagues have made a peace with the Selenitans and their associates upon these conditions, that the Heliotans shall cast down the wall, and deliver the prisoners that they have taken upon a ratable ransom: and that the Selenitans should leave the other stars at liberty, and raise no war against the Heliotans, but aid and assist one another if either of them should be invaded: that the king of the Selenitans should yearly pay to the king of the Heliotans in way of tribute ten thousand vessels of dew, and deliver ten thousand of their people to be pledges for their fidelity: that the colony to be sent to the Morning Star should be jointly supplied by them both, and liberty given to any else that would to be sharers in it: that these articles of peace should be engraven in a pillar of amber, to be erected in the midst of the air upon the confines of their country: for the performance whereof were sworn of the Heliotans, Pyronides and Therites and Phlogius: and of the Selenitans, Nyctor and Menius and Polylampes.” Thus was the peace concluded, the wall immediately demolished, and we that were prisoners delivered. Being returned into the Moon, they came forth to meet us, Endymion himself and all his friends, who embraced us with tears, and desired us to make our abode with him, and to be partners in the colony, promising to give me his own son in marriage (for there are no women amongst them), which I by no means would yield unto, but desired of all loves to be dismissed again into the sea, and he finding it impossible to persuade us to his purpose, after seven days’ feasting, gave us leave to depart.
Now, what strange novelties worthy of note I observed during the time of my abode there, I will relate unto you. The first is, that they are not begotten of women, but of mankind: for they have no other marriage but of males: the name of women is utterly unknown among them: until they accomplish the age of five and twenty years, they are given in marriage to others: from that time forwards they take others in marriage to themselves: for as soon as the infant is conceived the leg begins to swell, and afterwards when the time of birth is come, they give it a lance and take it out dead: then they lay it abroad with open mouth towards the wind, and so it takes life: and I think thereof the Grecians call it the belly of the leg, because therein they bear their children instead of a belly. I will tell you now of a thing more strange than this. There are a kind of men among them called Dendritans, which are begotten in this manner: they cut out the right stone out of a man’s cod, and set it in their ground, from which springeth up a great tree of flesh, with branches and leaves, bearing a kind of fruit much like to an acorn, but of a cubit in length, which they gather when they are ripe, and cut men out of them: their privy members are to be set on and taken off as they have occasion: rich men have them made of ivory, poor men of wood, wherewith they perform the act of generation and accompany their spouses.
When a man is come to his full age he dieth not, but is dissolved like smoke and is turned into air. One kind of food is common to them all, for they kindle a fire and broil frogs upon the coals, which are with them in infinite numbers flying in the air, and whilst they are broiling, they sit round about them as it were about a table, and lap up the smoke that riseth from them, and feast themselves therewith, and this is all their feeding. For their drink they have air beaten in a mortar, which yieldeth a kind of moisture much like unto dew. They have no avoidance of excrements, either of urine or dung, neither have they any issue for that purpose like unto us. Their boys admit copulation, not like unto ours, but in their hams, a little above the calf of the leg, for there they are open. They hold it a great ornament to be bald, for hairy persons are abhorred with them, and yet among the stars that are comets it is thought commendable, as some that have travelled those coasts reported unto us. Such beards as they have are growing a little above their knees. They have no nails on their feet, for their whole foot is all but one toe. Every one of them at the point of his rump hath a long colewort growing out instead of a tail, always green and flourishing, which though a man fall upon his back, cannot be broken. The dropping of their noses is more sweet than honey. When they labour or exercise themselves, they anoint their body with milk, wherein to if a little of that honey chance to drop, it will be turned into cheese. They make very fat oil of their beans, and of as delicate a savour as any sweet ointment. They have many vines in those parts, which yield them but water: for the grapes that hang upon the clusters are like our hailstones: and I verily think that when the vines there are shaken with a strong wind, there falls a storm of hail amongst us by the breaking down of those kind of berries. Their bellies stand them instead of satchels to put in their necessaries, which they may open and shut at their pleasure, for they have neither liver nor any kind of entrails, only they are rough and hairy within, so that when their young children are cold, they may be enclosed therein to keep them warm. The rich men have garments of glass, very soft and delicate: the poorer sort of brass woven, whereof they have great plenty, which they enseam with water to make it fit for the workman, as we do our wool. If I should write what manner of eyes they have, I doubt I should be taken for a liar in publishing a matter so incredible: yet I cannot choose but tell it: for they have eyes to take in and out as please themselves: and when a man is so disposed, he may take them out and lay them by till he have occasion to use them, and then put them in and see again: many when they have lost their own eyes, borrow of others, for the rich have many lying by them. Their ears are all made of the leaves of plane-trees, excepting those that come of acorns, for they only have them made of wood.
I saw also another strange thing in the same court: a mighty great glass lying upon the top of a pit of no great depth, whereinto, if any man descend, he shall hear everything that is spoken upon the earth: if he but look into the glass, he shall see all cities and all nations as well as if he were among them. There had I the sight of all my friends and the whole country about: whether they saw me or not I cannot tell: but if they believe it not to be so, let them take the pains to go thither themselves and they shall find my words true. Then we took our leaves of the king and such as were near him, and took shipping and departed: at which time Endymion bestowed upon me two mantles made of their glass, and five of brass, with a complete armour of those shells of lupins, all which I left behind me in the whale: and sent with us a thousand of his Hippogypians to conduct us five hundred furlongs on our way. In our course we coasted many other countries, and lastly arrived at the Morning Star now newly inhabited, where we landed and took in fresh water: from thence we entered the Zodiac, passing by the Sun, and, leaving it on our right hand, took our course near unto the shore, but landed not in the country, though our company did much desire it, for the wind would not give us leave: but we saw it was a flourishing region, fat and well watered, abounding with all delights: but the Nephelocentaurs espying us, who were mercenary soldiers to Phaethon, made to our ship as fast as they could, and finding us to be friends, said no more unto us, for our Hippogypians were departed before. Then we made forwards all the next night and day, and about evening-tide following we came to a city called Lychnopolis, still holding on our course downwards.
This city is seated in the air between the Pleiades and the Hyades, somewhat lower than the Zodiac, and arriving there, not a man was to be seen, but lights in great numbers running to and fro, which were employed, some in the market place, and some about the haven, of which many were little, and as a man may say, but poor things; some again were great and mighty, exceeding glorious and resplendent, and there were places of receipt for them all; every one had his name as well as men; and we did hear them speak. These did us no harm, but invited us to feast with them, yet we were so fearful, that we durst neither eat nor sleep as long as we were there. Their court of justice standeth in the midst of the city, where the governor sitteth all the night long calling every one by name, and he that answereth not is adjudged to die, as if he had forsaken his ranks. Their death is to be quenched. We also standing amongst them saw what was done, and heard what answers the lights made for themselves, and the reasons they alleged for tarrying so long: there we also knew our own light, and spake unto it, and questioned it of our affairs at home, and how all did there, which related everything unto us. That night we made our abode there, and on the next morrow returned to our ship, and sailing near unto the clouds had a sight of the city Nephelococcygia, which we beheld with great wonder, but entered not into it, for the wind was against us. The king thereof was Coronus, the son of Cottyphion: and I could not choose but think upon the poet Aristophanes, how wise a man he was, and how true a reporter, and how little cause there is to question his fidelity for what he hath written.
The third after, the ocean appeared plainly unto us, though we could see no land but what was in the air, and those countries also seemed to be fiery and of a glittering colour. The fourth day about noon, the wind gently forbearing, settled us fair and leisurely into the sea; and as soon as we found ourselves upon water, we were surprised with incredible gladness, and our joy was unexpressible; we feasted and made merry with such provision as we had; we cast ourselves into the sea, and swam up and down for our disport, for it was a calm. But oftentimes it falleth out that the change to the better is the beginning of greater evils: for when we had made only two days’ sail in the water, as soon as the third day appeared, about sun-rising, upon a sudden we saw many monstrous fishes and whales: but one above the rest, containing in greatness fifteen hundred furlongs, which came gaping upon us and troubled the sea round about him, so that he was compassed on every side with froth and foam, showing his teeth afar off, which were longer than any beech trees are with us, all as sharp as needles, and as white as ivory: then we took, as we thought, our last leaves one of another, and embracing together, expected our ending day. The monster was presently with us, and swallowed us up ship and all; but by chance he caught us not between his chops, for the ship slipped through the void passages down into his entrails. When we were thus got within him we continued a good while in darkness, and could see nothing till he began to gape, and then we perceived it to be a monstrous whale of a huge breadth and height, big enough to contain a city that would hold ten thousand men: and within we found small fishes and many other creatures chopped in pieces, and the masts of ships and anchors and bones of men and luggage. In the midst of him was earth and hills, which were raised, as I conjectured, by the settling of the mud which came down his throat, for woods grew upon them and trees of all sorts and all manner of herbs, and it looked as if it had been husbanded. The compass of the land was two hundred and forty furlongs: there were also to be seen all kind of sea fowl, as gulls, halcyons and others that had made their nests upon the trees. Then we fell to weeping abundantly, but at the last I roused up my company, and propped up our ship and struck fire. Then we made ready supper of such as we had, for abundance of all sort of fish lay ready by us, and we had yet water enough left which we brought out of the Morning Star.
The next morrow we rose to watch when the whale should gape: and then looking out, we could sometimes see mountains, sometimes only the skies, and many times islands, for we found that the fish carried himself with great swiftness to every part of the sea. When we grew weary of this, I took seven of my company, and went into the wood to see what I could find there, and we had not gone above five furlongs but we light upon a temple erected to Neptune, as by the title appeared, and not far off we espied many sepulchres and pillars placed upon them, with a fountain of clear water close unto it: we also heard the barking of a dog, and saw smoke rise afar off, so that we judged there was some dwelling thereabout. Wherefore making the more haste, we lighted upon an old man and a youth, who were very busy in making a garden and in conveying water by a channel from the fountain into it: whereupon we were surprised both with joy and fear: and they also were brought into the same taking, and for a long time remained mute. But after some pause, the old man said, What are ye, you strangers? any of the sea spirits? or miserable men like unto us? for we that are men by nature, born and bred in the earth, are now sea-dwellers, and swim up and down within the Continent of this whale, and know not certainly what to think of ourselves: we are like to men that be dead, and yet believe ourselves to be alive. Whereunto I answered, For our parts, father, we are men also, newly come hither, and swallowed up ship and all but yesterday: and now come purposely within this wood which is so large and thick: some good angel, I think, did guide us hither to have the sight of you, and to make us know that we are not the only men confined within this monster: tell us therefore your fortunes, we beseech you, what you are, and how you came into this place. But he answered, You shall not hear a word from me, nor ask any more questions until you have taken part of such viands as we are able to afford you.
So he took us and brought us into his house, which was sufficient to serve his turn: his pallets were prepared, and all things else made ready. Then he set before us herbs and nuts and fish, and filled out of his own wine unto us: and when we were sufficiently satisfied, he then demanded of us what fortunes we had endured, and I related all things to him in order that had betide unto us, the tempest, the passages in the island, our navigation in the air, our war, and all the rest, even till our diving into the whale. Whereat he wondered exceedingly, and began to deliver also what had befallen to him, and said, By lineage, O ye strangers, I am of the isle Cyprus, and travelling from mine own country as a merchant, with this my son you see here, and many other friends with me, made a voyage for Italy in a great ship full fraught with merchandise, which perhaps you have seen broken in pieces in the mouth of the whale. We sailed with fair weather till we were as far as Sicily, but there we were overtaken with such a boisterous storm that the third day we were driven into the ocean, where it was our fortune to meet with this whale which swallowed us all up, and only we two escaped with our lives; all the rest perished, whom we have here buried and built a temple to Neptune. Ever since we have continued this course of life, planting herbs and feeding upon fish and nuts: here is wood enough, you see, and plenty of vines which yield most delicate wine: we have also a well of excellent cool water, which it may be you have seen: we make our beds of the leaves of trees, and burn as much wood as we will: we chase after the birds that fly about us, and go out upon the gills of the monster to catch after live fishes: here we bathe ourselves when we are disposed, for we have a lake of salt water not far off, about some twenty furlongs in compass, full of sundry sorts of fish, in which we swim and sail upon it in a little boat of mine own making. This is the seven-and-twentieth year of our drowning, and with all this we might be well enough contented if our neighbours and borderers about us were not perverse and troublesome, altogether insociable and of stern condition.
Is it so, indeed, said I, that there should be any within the whale but yourselves? Many, said he, and such as are unreconcilable towards strangers, and of monstrous and deformed proportions. The western countries and the tail-part of the wood are inhabited by the Tarychanians that look like eels, with faces like a lobster: these are warlike, fierce, and feed upon raw flesh: they that dwell towards the right side are called Tritonomendetans, which have their upper parts like unto men, their lower parts like cats, and are less offensive than the rest. On the left side inhabit the Carcinochirians and the Thinnocephalians, which are in league one with another: the middle region is possessed by the Paguridians, and the Psettopodians, a warlike nation and swift of foot: eastwards towards the mouth is for the most part desert, as overwashed by the sea: yet am I fain to take that for my dwelling, paying yearly to the Psettopodians in way of tribute five hundred oysters. Of so many nations doth this country consist. We must therefore devise among ourselves either how to be able to fight with them, or how to live among them.
What number may they all amount unto? said I. More than a thousand, said he. And what armour have they? None at all, said he, but the bones of fishes. Then were it our best course, said I, to encounter them, being provided as we are, and they without weapons, for if we prove too hard for them we shall afterward live out of fear. This we concluded upon, and went to our ship to furnish ourselves with arms. The occasion of war we gave by non-payment of tribute, which then was due, for they sent their messengers to demand it, to whom he gave a harsh and scornful answer, and sent them packing with their arrant. But the Psettopodians and Paguridians, taking it ill at the hands of Scintharus, for so was the man named, came against us with great tumult: and we, suspecting what they would do, stood upon our guard to wait for them, and laid five-and-twenty of our men in ambush, commanding them as soon as the enemy was passed by to set upon them, who did so, and arose out of their ambush, and fell upon the rear. We also being five-and-twenty in number (for Scintharus and his son were marshalled among us) advanced to meet with them, and encountered them with great courage and strength: but in the end we put them to flight and pursued them to their very dens. Of the enemies were slain an hundred threescore and ten, and but one of us besides Trigles, our pilot, who was thrust through the back with a fish’s rib. All that day following and the night after we lodged in our trenches, and set on end a dry backbone of a dolphin instead of a trophy.
The next morrow the rest of the country people, perceiving what had happened, came to assault us. The Tarychanians were ranged in the right wing, with Pelamus their captain: the Thinnocephalians were placed in the left wing: the Carcinochirians made up the main battle: for the Tritonomendetans stirred not, neither would they join with either part. About the temple of Neptune we met with them, and joined fight with a great cry, which was answered with an echo out of the whale as if it had been out of a cave: but we soon put them to flight, being naked people, and chased them into the wood, making ourselves masters of the country. Soon after they sent ambassadors to us to crave the bodies of the dead and to treat upon conditions of peace; but we had no purpose to hold friendship with them, but set upon them the next day and put them all to the sword except the Tritonomendetans, who, seeing how it fared with the rest of their fellows, fled away through the gills of the fish, and cast themselves into the sea. Then we travelled all the country over, which now was desert, and dwelt there afterwards without fear of enemies, spending the time in exercise of the body and in hunting, in planting vineyards and gathering fruit of the trees, like such men as live delicately and have the world at will, in a spacious and unavoidable prison.
This kind of life led we for a year and eight months, but when the fifth day of the ninth month was come, about the time of the second opening of his mouth (for so the whale did once every hour, whereby we conjectured how the hours went away), I say about the second opening, upon a sudden we heard a great cry and a mighty noise like the calls of mariners and the stirring of oars, which troubled us not a little. Wherefore we crept up to the very mouth of the fish, and standing within his teeth, saw the strangest sight that ever eye beheld -- men of monstrous greatness, half a furlong in stature, sailing upon mighty great islands as if they were upon shipboard. I know you will think this smells like a lie, but yet you shall have it. The islands were of a good length indeed, but not very high, containing about an hundred furlongs in compass; every one of these carried of those kind of men eight-and-twenty, of which some sat on either side of the island and rowed in their course with great cypress trees, branches, leaves and all, instead of oars. On the stern or hinder part, as I take it, stood the governor, upon a high hill, with a brazen rudder of a furlong in length in his hand: on the fore-part stood forty such fellows as those, armed for the fight, resembling men in all points but in their hair, which was all fire and burnt clearly, so that they needed no helmets. Instead of sails the wood growing in the island did serve their turns, for the wind blowing against it drave forward the island like a ship, and carried it which way the governor would have it, for they had pilots to direct them, and were as nimble to be stirred with oars as any long-boat.
At the first we had the sight but of two or three of them: afterwards appeared no less than six hundred, which, dividing themselves in two parts, prepared for encounter, in which many of them by meeting with their barks together were broken in pieces, many were turned over and drowned: they that closed, fought lustily and would not easily be parted, for the soldiers in the front showed a great deal of valour, entering one upon another, and killed all they could, for none were taken prisoners. Instead of iron grapples they had mighty great polypodes fast tied, which they cast at the other, and if they once laid hold on the wood they made the isle sure enough for stirring. They darted and wounded one another with oysters that would fill a wain, and sponges as big as an acre. The leader on the one side was Aeolocentaurus, and of the other Thalassopotes. The quarrel, as it seems, grew about taking a booty: for they said that Thalassopotes drave away many flocks of dolphins that belonged to Aeolocentaurus, as we heard by their clamours one to another, and calling upon the names of their kings: but Aeolocentaurus had the better of the day and sunk one hundred and fifty of the enemy’s islands, and three they took with the men and all. The rest withdrew themselves and fled, whom the other pursued, but not far, because it grew towards evening, but returned to those that were wrecked and broken, which they also recovered for the most part, and took their own away with them: for on their part there were no less than fourscore islands drowned. Then they erected a trophy for a monument of this island fight, and fastened one of the enemy’s islands with a stake upon the head of the whale. That night they lodged close by the beast, casting their cables about him, and anchored near unto him: their anchors are huge and great, made of glass, but of a wonderful strength. The morrow after, when they had sacrificed upon the top of the whale, and there buried their dead, they sailed away, with great triumph and songs of victory. And this was the manner of the islands’ fight.


» The Second Book

Upon this we began to be weary of our abode in the whale, and our tarriance there did much trouble us. We therefore set all our wits a-work to find out some means or other to clear us from our captivity. First, we thought it would do well to dig a hole through his right side and make our escape that way forth, which we began to labour at lustily; but after we had pierced him five furlongs deep and found it was to no purpose, we gave it over. Then we devised to set the wood on fire, for that would certainly kill him without all question, and being once dead, our issue would be easy enough. This we also put in practice, and began our project at the tail end, which burnt seven days and as many nights before he had any feeling of our fireworks: upon the eighth and ninth days we perceived he began to grow sickly: for he gaped more dully than he was wont to do, and sooner closed his mouth again: the tenth and eleventh he was thoroughly mortified and began to stink: upon the twelfth day we bethought ourselves, though almost too late, that unless we underpropped his chops when he gaped next to keep them from closing, we should be in danger of perpetual imprisonment within his dead carcase and there miserably perish. We therefore pitched long beams of timber upright within his mouth to keep it from shutting, and then made our ship in a readiness, and provided ourselves with store of fresh water, and all other things necessary for our use, Scintharus taking upon him to be our pilot, and the next morrow the whale died. Then we hauled our ship through the void passages, and fastening cables about his teeth, by little and little settled it into the sea, and mounting the back of the whale, sacrificed to Neptune, and for three days together took up our lodging hard by the trophy, for we were becalmed.
The fourth day we put to sea, and met with many dead corpses that perished in the late sea-fight, which our ship hit against, whose bodies we took measure of with great admiration, and sailed for a few days in very temperate weather. But after that the north wind blew so bitterly that a great frost ensued, wherewith the whole sea was all frozen up, not only superficially upon the upper part, but in depth also the depth of four hundred fathoms, so that we were fain to forsake our ship and run upon the ice. The wind sitting long in this corner, and we not able to endure it, put this device in practice, which was the invention of Scintharus: -- with mattocks and other instruments we made a mighty cave in the water, wherein we sheltered ourselves forty days together: in it we kindled fire, and fed upon fish, of which we found great plenty in our digging. At the last, our provision falling short, we returned to our frozen ship, which we set upright, and spreading her sails, went forward as well as if we had been upon water, leisurely and gently sliding upon the ice; but on the fifth day the weather grew warm, and the frost brake, and all was turned to water again. We had not sailed three hundred furlongs forwards but we came to a little island that was desert, where we only took in fresh water (which now began to fail us), and with our shot killed two wild bulls, and so departed. These bulls have their horns growing not upon their heads but under their eyes, as Momus thought it better. Then we entered into a sea, not of water but of milk, in which appeared a white island full of vines. This island was only a great cheese well pressed (as we afterwards found when we fed upon it), about some five-and-twenty furlongs in bigness: the vines were full of clusters of grapes, out of which we could crush no wine, but only milk: in the midst of the island there was a temple built dedicated to Galatea, one of the daughters of Nereus, as by the inscription appeared. As long as we remained there the soil yielded us food and victuals, and our drink was the milk that came out of the grapes: in these, as they said, reigneth Tyro, the daughter of Salmoneus, who, after her departure, received this guerdon at the hands of Neptune.
In this island we rested ourselves five days, and on the sixth put to sea again, a gentle gale attending us, and the seas all still and quiet. The eighth day, as we sailed onward, not in milk any longer, but in salt and azure water, we saw many men running upon the sea, like unto us every way forth, both in shape and stature, but only for their feet, which were of cork, whereupon, I suppose, they had the name of Phellopodes. We marvelled much when we saw they did not sink, but keep above water, and travel upon it so boldly. These came unto us, and saluted us in the Grecian language, and said they were bound towards Phello, their own country, and for a while ran along by us, but at last turned their own way and left us, wishing us a happy and prosperous voyage. Within a while after many islands appeared, and near unto them, upon our left hand, stood Phello, the place whereunto they were travelling, which was a city seated upon a mighty great and round cork. Further off, and more towards the right hand, we saw five other islands, large and mountainous, in which much fire was burning; but directly before us was a spacious flat island, distant from us not above five hundred furlongs: and approaching somewhat near unto it, a wonderful fragrant air breathed upon us, of a most sweet and delicate smell, such as Herodotus, the story-writer, saith ariseth out of Arabia the happy, consisting of a mixture of roses, daffodils, gillyflowers, lilies, violets, myrtles, bays, and blossoms of vines: such a dainty odoriferous savour was conveyed unto us.
Being delighted with this smell, and hoping for better fortunes after our long labours, we got within a little of the isle, in which we found many havens on every side, not subject to overflowing, and yet of great capacity, and rivers of clear water emptying themselves easily into the sea, with meadows and herbs and musical birds, some singing upon the shore, and many upon the branches of trees, a still and gentle air compassing the whole country. When pleasant blasts gently stirred the woods the motion of the branches made a continual delightsome melody, like the sound of wind instruments in a solitary place: a kind of clamour also was heard mixed with it, yet not tumultuous nor offensive, but like the noise of a banquet, when some do play on wind instruments, some commend the music, and some with their hands applaud the pipe, or the harp. All which yielded us so great content that we boldly entered the haven, made fast our ship and landed, leaving in her only Scintharus and two more of our companions behind us. Passing along through a sweet meadow we met with the guards that used to sail about the island, who took us and bound us with garlands of roses (which are the strictest bands they have), to be carried to their governor: from them we heard, as we were upon the way, that it was the island of those that are called blessed, and that Rhadamanthus was governor there, to whom we were brought and placed the fourth in order of them that were to be judged.
The first trial was about Ajax, the son of Telamon, whether he were a meet man to be admitted into the society of the Heroes or not: the objections against him were his madness and the killing of himself: and after long pleading to and fro, Rhadamanthus gave this sentence, that for the present he should be put to Hippocrates, the physician of Cos, to be purged with helleborus, and upon the recovery of his wits to have admittance.
The second was a controversy of love, Theseus and Menelaus contending which had the better right to Helen; but Rhadamanthus gave judgment on Menelaus’ side, in respect of the manifold labours and perils he had incurred for that marriage’s sake, whereas Theseus had wives enough beside to live withal -- as the Amazon, and the daughters of Minos. The third was a question of precedency between Alexander, the son of Philip, and Hannibal, the Carthaginian, in which Alexander was preferred, and his throne placed next to the elder Cyrus the Persian.
In the fourth place we appeared, and he demanded of us what reason we had, being living men, to take land in that sacred country, and we told him all our adventures in order as they befell us: then he commanded us to stand aside, and considering upon it a great while, in the end proposed it to the benchers, which were many, and among them Aristides the Athenian, surnamed the Just: and when he was provided what sentence to deliver, he said that for our busy curiosity and needless travels we should be accountable after our death; but for the present we should have a time limited for our abode, during which we should feast with the Heroes and then depart, prefixing us seven months’ liberty to conclude our tarriance, and no more. Then our garlands fell off from us of themselves, and we were set loose and led into the city to feast with the blessed.
The city was all of gold, compassed with a wall made of the precious stone smaragdus, which had seven gates, every one cut out of a whole piece of timber of cinnamon-tree: the pavement of the city and all the ground within the walls was ivory: the temples of all the gods are built of beryl, with large altars made all of one whole amethyst, upon which they offer their sacrifices: about the city runneth a river of most excellent sweet ointment, in breadth an hundred cubits of the larger measure, and so deep that a man may swim in it with ease. For their baths they have great houses of glass, which they warm with cinnamon: and their bathing-tubs are filled with warm dew instead of water. Their only garments are cobwebs of purple colour; neither have they any bodies, but are intactile and without flesh, a mere shape and presentation only: and being thus bodiless, they yet stand, and are moved, are intelligent, and can speak: and their naked soul seemeth to wander up and down in a corporal likeness: for if a man touch them not he cannot say otherwise, but that they have bodies, altogether like shadows standing upright, and not, as they are, of a dark colour. No man waxeth any older there than he was before, but of what age he comes thither, so he continues. Neither is there any night with them, nor indeed clear day: but like the twilight towards morning before the sun be up, such a kind of light do they live in. They know but one season of the year which is the spring, and feel no other wind but Zephyrus. The region flourisheth with all sorts of flowers, and with all pleasing plants fit for shade: their vines bear fruit twelve times a year, every month once: their pomegranate-trees, their apple-trees, and their other fruit, they say, bear thirteen times in the year, for in the month called Minous they bear twice. Instead of wheat their ears bear them loaves of bread ready baked, like unto mushrooms. About the city are three hundred three-score and five wells of water, and as many of honey, and five hundred of sweet ointment, for they are less than the other. They have seven rivers of milk and eight of wine.
They keep their feast without the city in a field called Elysium, which is a most pleasant meadow, environed with woods of all sorts, so thick that they serve for a shade to all that are invited, who sit upon beds of flowers, and are waited upon, and have everything brought unto them by the winds, unless it be to have the wine filled: and that there is no need of: for about the banqueting place are mighty great trees growing of clear and pure glass, and the fruit of those trees are drinking-cups and other kind of vessels of what fashion or greatness you will: and every man that comes to the feast gathers one or two of those cups, and sets them before him, which will be full of wine presently, and then they drink. Instead of garlands the nightingales and other musical birds gather flowers with their beaks out of the meadows adjoining, and flying over their heads with chirping notes scatter them among them.
They are anointed with sweet ointment in this manner: sundry clouds draw that unguent out of the fountains and the rivers, which settling over the heads of them that are at the banquet, the least blast of wind makes a small rain fall upon them like unto a dew. After supper they spend the time in music and singing: their ditties that are in most request they take out of Homer’s verses, who is there present himself and feasteth among them, sitting next above Ulysses: their choirs consist of boys and virgins, which were directed and assisted by Eunomus the Locrian, and Arion the Lesbian, and Anacreon, and Stesichorus, who hath had a place there ever since his reconcilement with Helena. As soon as these have done there enter a second choir of swans, swallows, and nightingales; and when they have ended, the whole woods ring like wind-instruments by the stirring of the air.
But that which maketh most for their mirth are two wells adjoining to the banqueting place, the one of laughter, the other of pleasure: of these every man drinks to begin the feast withal, which makes them spend the whole time in mirth and laughter.
I will also relate unto you what famous men I saw in that association. There were all the demigods, and all that fought against Troy, excepting Ajax the Locrian: he only, they told me, was tormented in the region of the unrighteous. Of barbarians there was the elder and the younger Cyrus, and Anacharsis the Scythian, Zamolxis the Thracian, and Numa the Italian. There was also Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian, and Phocion and Tellus the Athenians, and all the Wise Men, unless it were Periander.
I also saw Socrates, the son of Sophroniscus, prattling with Nestor and Palamedes, and close by him stood Hyacinthus the Lacedaemonian, and the gallant Narcissus and Hylas, and other beautiful and lovely youths, and for aught I could gather by him he was far in love with Hyacinthus, for he discoursed with him more than all the rest: for which cause, they said, Rhadamanthus was offended at him, and often threatened to thrust him out of the island if he continued to play the fool in that fashion, and not give over his idle manner of jesting, when he was at their banquet. Only Plato was not present, for they said he dwelled in a city framed by himself, observing the same rule of government and laws as he had prescribed for them to live under.
Aristippus and Epicurus are prime men amongst them, because they are the most jovial good fellows and the best companions. Diogenes the Sinopean was so far altered from the man he was before that he married with Lais the harlot, and was many times so drunk that he would rise and dance about the room as a man out of his senses. Aesop the Phrygian served them for a jester. There was not one Stoic in company but were still busied in ascending the height of virtue’s hill: and of Chrysippus we heard that it was not lawful for him by any means to touch upon the island until he have the fourth time purged himself with helleborus. The Academics, they say, were willing enough to come, but that they yet are doubtful and in suspense, and cannot comprehend how there should be any such island; but indeed, I think, they were fearful to come to be judged by Rhadamanthus, because themselves have abolished all kind of judgment: yet many of them, they say, had a desire, and would follow after those that were coming hither, but were so slothful as to give it over because they were not comprehensive, and therefore turned back in the midst of their way.
These were all the men of note that I saw there; and amongst them all Achilles was held to be the best man, and next to him Theseus. For their manner of venery and copulation thus it is: they couple openly in the eyes of all men, both with females and male kind, and no man holds it for any dishonesty. Only Socrates would swear deeply that he accompanied young men in a cleanly fashion, and therefore every man condemned him for a perjured fellow: and Hyacinthus and Narcissus both confessed otherwise for all his denial.
The women there are all in common, and no man takes exception at it, in which respect they are absolutely the best Platonists in the world: and so do the boys yield themselves to any man’s pleasure without contradiction.
After I had spent two or three days in this manner, I went to talk with Homer the poet, our leisure serving us both well, and to know of him what countryman he was, a question with us hard to be resolved, and he said he could not certainly tell himself, because some said he was of Chios, some of Smyrna, and many to be of Colophon; but he said indeed he was a Babylonian, and among his own countrymen not called Homer but Tigranes, and afterwards living as an hostage among the Grecians, he had therefore that name put upon him. Then I questioned him about those verses in his books that are disallowed as not of his making, whether they were written by him or not, and he told me they were all his own, much condemning Zenodotus and Aristarchus, the grammarians, for their weakness in judgment.
When he had satisfied me in this, I asked him again why he began the first verse of his poem with anger: and he told me it fell out so by chance, not upon any premeditation. I also desired to know of him whether he wrote his Odysseys before his Iliads, as many men do hold: but he said it was not so. As for his blindness which is charged upon him, I soon found it was far otherwise, and perceived it so plainly that I needed not to question him about it.
Thus was I used to do many days when I found him idle, and would go to him and ask him many questions, which he would give me answer to very freely: especially when we talked of a trial he had in the court of justice, wherein he got the better: for Thersites had preferred a bill of complaint against him for abusing him and scoffing at him in his Poem, in which action Homer was acquitted, having Ulysses for his advocate.
About the same time came to us Pythagoras the Samian, who had changed his shape now seven times, and lived in as many lives, and accomplished the periods of his soul. The right half of his body was wholly of gold; and they all agreed that he should have place amongst them, but were doubtful what to call him, Pythagoras or Euphorbus. Empedocles also came to the place, scorched quite over, as if his body had been broiled upon the embers; but could not be admitted for all his great entreaty.
The time passing thus along, the day of prizes for masteries of activity now approached, which they call Thanatusia. The setters of them forth were Achilles the fifth time, and Theseus the seventh time. To relate the whole circumstance would require a long discourse, but the principal points I will deliver. At wrestling Carus, one of the lineage of Hercules, had the best, and won the garland from Ulysses. The fight with fists was equal between Arius the Aegyptian, who was buried at Corinth, and Epius, that combated for it. There was no prize appointed for the Pancratian fight: neither do I remember who got the best in running: but for poetry, though Homer without question were too good for them all, yet the best was given to Hesiodus. The prizes were all alike, garlands plotted of peacocks’ feathers.
As soon as the games were ended, news came to us that the damned crew in the habitation of the wicked had broken their bounds, escaped the gaolers, and were coming to assail the island, led by Phalaris the Agrigentine, Busyris the Aegyptian, Diomedes the Thracian, Sciron, Pituocamptes, and others: which Rhadamanthus hearing, he ranged the Heroes in battle array upon the sea-shore, under the leading of Theseus and Achilles and Ajax Telamonius, who had now recovered his senses, where they joined fight; but the Heroes had the day, Achilles carrying himself very nobly. Socrates also, who was placed in the right wing, was noted for a brave soldier, much better than he was in his lifetime, in the battle at Delium: for when the enemy charged him, he neither fled nor changed countenance: wherefore afterwards, in reward of his valour, he had a prize set out for him on purpose, which was a beautiful and spacious garden, planted in the suburbs of the city, whereunto he invited many, and disputed with them there, giving it the name of Necracademia.
Then we took the vanquished prisoners, and bound them, and sent them back to be punished with greater torments.
This fight was also penned by Homer, who, at my departure, gave me the book to show my friends, which I afterwards lost and many things else beside: but the first verse of the poem I remember was this: “Tell me now, Muse, how the dead Heroes fought.”
When they overcome in fight, they have a custom to make a feast with sodden beans, wherewith they banquet together for joy of their victory: only Pythagoras had no part with them, but sat aloof off, and lost his dinner because he could not away with beans.
Six months were now passed over, and the seventh halfway onwards, when a new business was begot amongst us. For Cinyras the son of Scintharus, a proper tall young man, had long been in love with Helena, and it might plainly be perceived that she as fondly doted upon him, for they would still be winking and drinking one to another whilst they were a-feasting, and rise alone together, and wander up and down in the wood. This humour increasing, and knowing not what course to take, Cinyras’ device was to steal away Helena, whom he found as pliable to run away with him, to some of the islands adjoining, either to Phello, or Tyroessa, having before combined with three of the boldest fellows in my company to join with them in their conspiracy; but never acquainted his father with it, knowing that he would surely punish him for it.
Being resolved upon this, they watched their time to put it in practice: for when night was come, and I absent (for I was fallen asleep at the feast), they gave a slip to all the rest, and went away with Helena to shipboard as fast as they could. Menelaus waking about midnight, and finding his bed empty, and his wife gone, made an outcry, and calling up his brother, went to the court of Rhadamanthus.
As soon as the day appeared, the scouts told them they had descried a ship, which by that time was got far off into the sea. Then Rhadamanthus set out a vessel made of one whole piece of timber of asphodelus wood, manned with fifty of the Heroes to pursue after them, which were so willing on their way, that by noon they had overtaken them newly entered into the milky ocean, not far from Tyroessa, so near were they got to make an escape. Then took we their ship and hauled it after us with a chain of roses and brought it back again.
Rhadamanthus first examined Cinyras and his companions whether they had any other partners in this plot, and they confessing none, were adjudged to be tied fast by the privy members and sent into the place of the wicked, there to be tormented, after they had been scourged with rods made of mallows. Helena, all blubbered with tears, was so ashamed of herself that she would not show her face. They also decreed to send us packing out of the country, our prefixed time being come, and that we should stay there no longer than the next morrow: wherewith I was much aggrieved and wept bitterly to leave so good a place and turn wanderer again I knew not whither: but they comforted me much in telling me that before many years were past I should be with them again, and showed me a chair and a bed prepared for me against the time to come near unto persons of the best quality.
Then went I to Rhadamanthus, humbly beseeching him to tell me my future fortunes, and to direct me in my course; and he told me that after many travels and dangers, I should at last recover my country, but would not tell me the certain time of my return: and showing me the islands adjoining, which were five in number, and a sixth a little further off, he said, Those nearest are the islands of the ungodly, which you see burning all in a light fire, but the other sixth is the island of dreams, and beyond that is the island of Calypso, which you cannot see from hence. When you are past these, you shall come into the great continent, over against your own country, where you shall suffer many afflictions, and pass through many nations, and meet with men of inhuman conditions, and at length attain to the other continent.
When he had told me this, he plucked a root of mallows out of the ground, and reached it to me, commanding me in my greatest perils to make my prayers to that: advising me further neither to rake in the fire with my knife, nor to feed upon lupins, nor to come near a boy when he is past eighteen years of age: if I were mindful of this, the hopes would be great that I should come to the island again.
Then we prepared for our passage, and feasted with them at the usual hour, and next morrow I went to Homer, entreating him to do so much as make an epigram of two verses for me, which he did: and I erected a pillar of berylstone near unto the haven, and engraved them upon it. The epigram was this:

  _Lucian, the gods’ belov’d, did once attain
  To see all this, and then go home again._

After that day’s tarrying, we put to sea, brought onward on our way by the Heroes, where Ulysses closely coming to me that Penelope might not see him, conveyed a letter into my hand to deliver to Calypso in the isle of Ogygia. Rhadamanthus also sent Nauplius, the ferryman, along with us, that if it were our fortune to put into those islands, no man should lay hands upon us, because we were bent upon other employments.
No sooner had we passed beyond the smell of that sweet odour but we felt a horrible filthy stink, like pitch and brimstone burning, carrying an intolerable scent with it as if men were broiling upon burning coals: the air was dark and muddy, from which distilled a pitchy kind of dew. We heard also the lash of the whips, and the roarings of the tormented: yet went we not to visit all the islands, but that wherein we landed was of this form: it was wholly compassed about with steep, sharp, and craggy rocks, without either wood or water: yet we made a shift to scramble up among the cliffs, and so went forwards in a way quite overgrown with briars and thorns through a most villainous ghastly country, and coming at last to the prison and place of torment we wondered to see the nature and quality of the soil, which brought forth no other flowers but swords and daggers, and round about it ran certain rivers, the first of dirt, the second of blood, and the innermost of burning fire, which was very broad and unpassable, floating like water, and working like the waves of the sea, full of sundry fishes, some as big as firebrands, others of a less size like coals of fire, and these they call Lychniscies.
There was but one narrow entrance into it, and Timon of Athens appointed to keep the door, yet we got in by the help of Nauplius, and saw them that were tormented, both kings and private persons very many, of which there were some that I knew, for there I saw Cinyras tied by private members, and hanging up in the smoke. But the greatest torments of all are inflicted upon them that told any lies in their lifetime, and wrote untruly, as Ctesias the Cnidian, Herodotus, and many other, which I beholding, was put in great hopes that I should never have anything to do there, for I do not know that ever I spake any untruth in my life. We therefore returned speedily to our ship (for we could endure the sight no longer), and taking our leaves of Nauplius, sent him back again.
A little after appeared the Isle of Dreams near unto us, an obscure country and unperspicuous to the eye, endued with the same quality as dreams themselves are: for as we drew, it still gave back and fled from us, that it seemed to be farther off than at the first, but in the end we attained it and entered the haven called Hypnus, and adjoined to the gate of ivory, where the temple of Alectryon stands, and took land somewhat late in the evening.
Entering the gate we saw many dreams of sundry fashions; but I will first tell you somewhat of the city, because no man else hath written any description of it: only Homer hath touched it a little, but to small purpose.
It is round about environed with a wood, the trees whereof are exceeding high poppies and mandragoras, in which an infinite number of owls do nestle, and no other birds to be seen in the island: near unto it is a river running, called by them Nyctiporus, and at the gates are two wells, the one named Negretus, the other Pannychia. The wall of the city is high and of a changeable colour, like unto the rainbow, in which are four gates, though Homer speak but of two: for there are two which look toward the fields of sloth, the one made of iron, the other of potter’s clay, through which those dreams have passage that represent fearful, bloody, and cruel matters: the other two behold the haven and the sea, of which the one is made of horn, the other of ivory, which we went in at.
As we entered the city, on the right hand stands the temple of the Night, whom, with Alectryon, they reverence above all the gods: for he hath also a temple built for him near unto the haven. On the left hand stands the palace of sleep, for he is the sovereign king over them all, and hath deputed two great princes to govern under him, namely, Taraxion, the son of Matogenes, and Plutocles, the son of Phantasion.
In the middest of the market-place is a well, by them called Careotis, and two temples adjoining, the one of falsehood, the other of truth, which have either of them a private cell peculiar to the priests, and an oracle, in which the chief prophet is Antiphon, the interpreter of dreams, who was preferred by Sleep to that place of dignity.
These dreams are not all alike either in nature or shape, for some of them are long, beautiful, and pleasing: others again are as short and deformed. Some make show to be of gold, and others to be as base and beggarly. Some of them had wings, and were of monstrous forms: others set out in pomp, as it were in a triumph, representing the appearances of kings, gods, and other persons.
Many of them were of our acquaintance, for they had been seen of us before, which came unto us and saluted us as their old friends, and took us and lulled us asleep, and feasted us nobly and courteously, promising beside all other entertainment which was sumptuous and costly, to make us kings and princes. Some of them brought us home to our own country to show us our friends there, and come back with us the next morrow.
Thus we spent thirty days and as many nights among them, sleeping and feasting all the while, until a sudden clap of thunder awakened us all, and we starting up, provided ourselves of victuals, and took sea again, and on the third day landed in Ogygia. But upon the way I opened the letter I was to deliver, and read the contents, which were these:

    “Ulysses to Calypso sendeth greeting. This is to give you to understand that after my departure from you in the vessel I made in haste for myself, I suffered shipwreck, and hardly escaped by the help of Leucothea into the country of the Phaeacks, who sent me to mine own home, where I found many that were wooers to my wife, and riotously consumed my means; but I slew them all, and was afterwards killed myself by my son Telegonus, whom I begat of Circe, and am now in the island of the blessed, where I daily repent myself for refusing to live with you, and forsaking the immortality proffered me by you; but if I can spy a convenient time, I will give them all the slip and come to you.”

This was the effect of the letter, with some addition concerning us, that we should have entertainment: and far had I not gone from the sea but I found such a cave as Homer speaks of, and she herself working busily at her wool. When she had received the letter, and brought us in, she began to weep and take on grievously, but afterwards she called us to meat, and made us very good cheer, asking us many questions concerning Ulysses and Penelope, whether she was so beautiful and modest as Ulysses had often before bragged of her.
And we made her such answer as we thought would give her best content: and departing to our ship, reposed ourselves near unto the shore, and in the morning put to sea, where we were taken with a violent storm, which tossed us two days together, and on the third we fell among the Colocynthopiratans. These are a wild kind of men, that issue out of the islands adjoining, and prey upon passengers, and for their shipping have mighty great gourds six cubits in length, which they make hollow when they are ripe, and cleanse out all that is within them, and use the rinds for ships, making their masts of reeds, and their sails of the gourd leaves.
These set upon us with two ships furnished and fought with us, and wounded many, casting at us instead of stones the seeds of those gourds. The fight was continued with equal fortune until about noon, at which time, behind the Colocynthopiratans, we espied the Caryonautans coming on, who, as it appeared, were enemies to the other, for when they saw them approach, they forsook us and turned about to fight with them; and in the mean space we hoist sail and away, leaving them together by the ears, and no doubt but the Caryonautans had the better of the day, for they exceeded in number, having five ships well furnished, and their vessels of greater strength, for they are made of nutshells cloven in the midst and cleansed, of which every half is fifteen fathom in length.
When we were got out of sight we were careful for the curing of our hurt men, and from that time forwards went no more unarmed, fearing continually to be assaulted on the sudden: and good cause we had: for before sun-setting some twenty men or thereabouts, which also were pirates, made towards us, riding upon monstrous great dolphins, which carried them surely: and when their riders gat upon their backs, would neigh like horses. When they were come near us, they divided themselves, some on the one side, and some on the other, and flung at us with dried cuttle-fishes and the eyes of sea-crabs: but when we shot at them again and hurt them, they would not abide it, but fled to the island, the most of them wounded.
About midnight, the sea being calm, we fell before we were aware upon a mighty great halcyon’s nest, in compass no less than threescore furlongs, in which the halcyon herself sailed, as she was hatching her eggs, in quantity almost equalling the nest, for when she took her wings, the blast of her feathers had like to have overturned our ship, making a lamentable noise as she flew along.
As soon as it was day, we got upon it, and found it to be a nest, fashioned like a great lighter, with trees plaited and wound one within another, in which were five hundred eggs, every one bigger than a tun of Chios measure, and so near their time of hatching that the young chickens might be seen and began to cry. Then with an axe we hewed one of the eggs in pieces, and cut out a young one that had no feathers, which yet was bigger than twenty of our vultures.
When we had gone some two hundred furlongs from this nest, fearful prodigies and strange tokens appeared unto us, for the carved goose, that stood for an ornament on the stern of our ship, suddenly flushed out with feathers and began to cry. Scintharus, our pilot, that was a bald man, in an instant was covered with hair: and which was more strange than all the rest, the mast of our ship began to bud out with branches and to bear fruit at the top, both of figs and great clusters of grapes, but not yet ripe. Upon the sight of this we had great cause to be troubled in mind, and therefore besought the gods to avert from us the evil that by these tokens was portended.
And we had not passed full out five hundred furlongs, but we came in view of a mighty wood of pine-trees and cypress, which made us think it had been land, when it was indeed a sea of infinite depth, planted with trees that had no roots, but floated firm and upright, standing upon the water. When we came to it and found how the case stood with us, we knew not what to do with ourselves. To go forwards through the trees was altogether impossible: they were so thick and grew so close together: and to turn again with safety was as much unlikely.
I therefore got me up to the top of the highest tree to discover, if I could, what was beyond; and I found the breadth of the wood to be fifty furlongs or thereabout, and then appeared another ocean to receive us. Wherefore we thought it best to assay to lift up our ship upon the leaves of the trees which were thick grown, and by that means pass over, if it were possible, to the other ocean: and so we did: for fastening a strong cable to our ship, we wound it about the tops of the trees, and with much ado poised it up to the height, and placing it upon the branches, spread our sails, and were carried as it were upon the sea, dragging our ship after us by the help of the wind which set it forwards. At which time a verse of the poet Antimachus came to my remembrance, wherein he speaks of sailing over tops of trees.
When we had passed over the wood, and were come to the sea again, we let down our ship in the same manner as we took it up. Then sailed we forwards in a pure and clear stream, until we came to an exceeding great gulf or trench in the sea, made by the division of the waters as many times is upon land, where we see great clefts made in the ground by earthquakes and other means. Whereupon we struck sail and our ship stayed upon a sudden when it was at the pit’s brim ready to tumble in: and we stooping down to look into it, thought it could be no less than a thousand furlongs deep, most fearful and monstrous to behold, for the water stood as it were divided into two parts, but looking on our right hand afar off, we perceived a bridge of water, which to our seeming, did join the two seas together and crossed over from the one to the other. Wherefore we laboured with oars to get unto it, and over it we went and with much ado got to the further side beyond all our expectation.
Then a calm sea received us, and in it we found an island, not very great, but inhabited with unsociable people, for in it were dwelling wild men named Bucephalians, that had horns on their heads like the picture of Minotaurus, where we went ashore to look for fresh water and victuals, for ours was all spent: and there we found water enough, but nothing else appeared; only we heard a great bellowing and roaring a little way off, which we thought to have been some herd of cattle, and going forwards, fell upon those men, who espying us, chased us back again, and took three of our company: the rest fled towards the sea.
Then we all armed ourselves, not meaning to leave our friends unrevenged, and set upon the Bucephalians as they were dividing the flesh of them that were slain, and put them all to flight, and pursued after them, of whom we killed fifty, and two we took alive, and so returned with our prisoners; but food we could find none.
Then the company were all earnest with me to kill those whom we had taken; but I did not like so well of that, thinking it better to keep them in bonds until ambassadors should come from the Bucephalians to ransom them that were taken, and indeed they did: and I well understood by the nodding of their heads, and their lamentable lowing, like petitioners, what their business was.
So we agreed upon a ransom of sundry cheeses and dried fish and onions and four deer with three legs apiece, two behind and one before. Upon these conditions we delivered those whom we had taken, and tarrying there but one day, departed.
Then the fishes began to show themselves in the sea, and the birds flew over our heads, and all other tokens of our approach to land appeared unto us. Within a while after we saw men travelling the seas, and a new found manner of navigation, themselves supplying the office both for ship and sailor, and I will tell you how. As they lie upon their backs in the water and their privy members standing upright, which are of a large size and fit for such a purpose, they fasten thereto a sail, and holding their cords in their hands, when the wind hath taken it, are carried up and down as please themselves.
After these followed others riding upon cork, for they yoke two dolphins together, and drive them on (performing themselves the place of a coachman), which draw the cork along after them. These never offered us any violence, nor once shunned our sight; but passed along in our company without fear, in a peaceable manner, wondering at the greatness of our ship, and beholding it on every side.
At evening we arrived upon a small island, inhabited, as it seemed, only by women, which could speak the Greek language; for they came unto us, gave us their hands, and saluted us, all attired like wantons, beautiful and young, wearing long mantles down to the foot: the island was called Cabbalusa and the city Hydramardia. So the women received us, and every one of them took aside one of us for herself, and made him her guest. But I pausing a little upon it (for my heart misgave me), looked narrowly round about, and saw the bones of many men, and the skulls lying together in a corner; yet I thought not good to make any stir, or to call my company about me, or to put on arms; but taking the mallow into my hand, made my earnest prayers thereto that I might escape out of those present perils.
Within a while after, when the strange female came to wait upon me, I perceived she had not the legs of a woman, but the hoofs of an ass. Whereupon I drew my sword, and taking fast hold of her, bound her, and examined her upon the point: and she, though unwillingly, confessed that they were sea-women, called Onosceleans, and they fed upon strangers that travelled that way. For, said she, when we have made them drunk, we go to bed to them, and in their sleep, make a hand of them.
I hearing this, left her bound in the place where she was, and went up to the roof of the house, where I made an outcry, and called my company to me, and when they were come together, acquainted them with all that I had heard, and showed them the bones, and brought them into her that was bound, who suddenly was turned into water, and could not be seen. Notwithstanding, I thrust my sword into the water to see what would come of it, and it was changed into blood.
Then we made all the haste we could to our ship, and got us away, and as soon as it was clear day, we had sight of the mainland, which we judged to be the country opposite to our continent. Whereupon we worshipped, and made our prayers, and took council what was now to be done. Some thought it best only to go a-land and so return back again: others thought it better to leave our ship there and march into the mid-land to try what the inhabitants would do: but whilst we were upon this consultation a violent storm fell upon us, which drave our ship against the shore, and burst it all in pieces, and with much ado we all swam to land with our arms, every man catching what he could lay hands on.
These are all the occurrences I can acquaint you withal, till the time of our landing, both in the sea, and in our course to the islands, and in the air, and after that in the whale; and when we came out again what betid unto us among the Heroes and among the dreams, and lastly among the Bucephalians and the Onosceleans. What passed upon land the next books shall deliver.