Page:Lucian (IA lucianlucas00collrich).pdf/142

132 something more. He jests continually at the falsehoods which were passed off as Truth, and at the doubtful shadows, of various shape and hue, which confident theorists insisted were her true and only embodiment. But if he could have been sure of her identity, there is no reason to think he would not have become her ready and willing worshipper.

Hopelessly puzzled by the contradictory theories of the philosophers, especially on cosmogony, the Cynic Menippus has taken a journey to the stars to see whether he may possibly learn the truth there; and in the Dialogue which bears the above title he gives an account of his aerial travels to a friend. He had made for himself a rather uneven pair of wings by cutting off one from an eagle and one from a vulture, and after some preliminary experiments in flying had succeeded in making good his first stage, to the Moon. The earth and its inhabitants looked wonderfully small from that height; indeed, except the Colossus of Rhodes and the watchtower of Pharos, he could make out little or nothing; until Empedocles, whom he met there (looking as black as a cinder, as well he might, having so lately come out of the crater of Ætna), showed him that by using the eagle's wing only for a while he might also acquire the eagle's vision. Then he saw many things not clearly discernible to ordinary eyes, for his new sight penetrated even into the houses. He saw the Epicurean forswearing himself for a thousand drachmas, the Stoic quarrel-