Trips to the Moon Part 8

{127a} The famous tyrant of Agrigentum, renowned for his ingenious contrivance of roasting his enemies in a brazen bull, and not less memorable for some excellent epistles, which set a wit and scholar together by the ears concerning the genuineness of them. See the famous contest between Bentley and Boyle.

{127b} Who sacrificed to Jupiter all the strangers that came into his kingdom. "Hospites violabat," says Seneca, "ut eorum sanguine pluviam eliceret, cujus penuria AEgyptus novem annis laboraverat."

A most ingenious contrivance.

{128a} A king of Thrace who fed his horses with human flesh.

{128b} Scyron and Pityocamptes were two famous robbers, who used to seize on travellers and commit the most horrid cruelties upon them.

They were slain by Theseus. See Plutarch's "Life of Theseus."

{128c} Where he ran away, but, as we are told, in very good company.

See Diog. Laert. Strabo, etc.

{132} The Antipodes. We never heard whether Lucian performed this voyage. D'Ablancourt, however, his French translator, in his continuation of the "True History," has done it for him, not without some humour, though it is by no means equal to the original.

{135a} Voltaire has improved on this pa.s.sage, and given us a very humorous account of "les Habitans de l'Enfer," in his wicked "Pucelle."

{135b} Who, the reader will remember, had just before run off with Helen.

{136a} Greek, [Greek], sleep.

{136b} As herald of the morn.

{136c} A root which, infused, is supposed to promote sleep, consequently very proper for the Island of Dreams.

"Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the East, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou ow'dst yesterday."

See Shakespeare's "Oth.e.l.lo."

{136d} Night wanderer.

{137a} Gr. [Greek], inexperrectus, unwaked or wakeful.

{137b} Gr. [Greek], pernox, all night.

{137c} "Two portals firm the various phantoms keep; Of ev'ry one; whence flit, to mock the brain, Of winged lies a light fantastic train; The gate opposed pellucid valves adorn, And columns fair, encased with polished horn; Where images of truth for pa.s.sage wait."

See Pope's Homer's "Odyssey," bk. xix., 1.

637.

See also Virgil, who has pretty closely imitated his master.

{138a} Gr. [Greek], terriculum vanipori: fright, the son of vain hope, or disappointment.

{138b} Gr. [Greek], divitiglorium, the pride of riches--i.e., arising from riches; son of phantasy, or deceit.

{138c} Gr. [Greek], gravi-somnem, heavy sleep.

{141a} Nut sailors; or, sailors in a nut-sh.e.l.l.

{141b} Those who sailed in the gourds.

{147a} Cabalusa and Hydamardia are hard words, which the commentators confess they can make nothing of. Various, however, are the derivations, and numerous the guesses made about them. The English reader may, if he pleases, call them not improperly, especially the first, Cabalistic.

{147b} Which the reader will remember was given him by way of charm, on his departure from the Happy Island.

{148} Gr. [Greek], asini-eruras, a.s.s-legged.

{149} The ensuing books never appeared. The "True History," like

--"the bear and fiddle, Begins, but breaks off in the middle."

D'Ablancourt, as I observed above, has carried it on a little farther. There is still room for any ingenious modern to take the plan from Lucian, and improve upon it.

{153} The ancient Greek stadium is supposed to have contained a hundred and twenty-five geometrical paces, or six hundred and twenty-five Roman feet, corresponding to our furlong. Eight stadia make a geometrical, or Italian mile; and twenty, according to Dacier, a French league. It is observed, notwithstanding, by Guilletiere, a famous French writer, that the stadium was only six hundred Athenian feet, six hundred and four English feet, or a hundred and three geometrical paces.

The Greeks measured all their distances by stadia, which, after all we can discover concerning them, are different in different times and places.

{154} The Phoenicians, it is supposed, were the first sailors, and steered their course according to the appearance of the stars.

{155} Greek, [Greek], coelicoloe, Homer's general name for the G.o.ds.

{156} Ganymede, whom Jupiter fell in love with, as he was hunting on Mount Ida, and turning himself into an eagle, carried up with him to heaven. "I am sure," says Menippus's friend, archly enough, "you were not carried up there, like Ganymede, for your beauty."

{157a} "Icarus Icariis nomina fecit aquis." The story is too well known to stand in need of any ill.u.s.tration. This accounts for the t.i.tle of Icaro-Menippus.

{157b} See Bishop Wilkins's "Art of Flying," where this ingenious contrivance of Menippus's is greatly improved upon. For a humorous detail of the many advantages attending this n.o.ble art, I refer my readers to the Spectator.

{159} Even Lucian's Menippus, we see, could not reflect on the works of G.o.d without admiration; but with how much more dignity are they considered by the holy Psalmist!--

"O praise the Lord of heaven, praise Him in the height. Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all ye stars; praise the Lord upon earth, ye dragons and all deeps; fire and hail, snow and vapours, wind and storm fulfilling His word."--Psalm cxlviii.

{161} This was the opinion of Anaxagoras, one of the Ionic philosophers, born at Clazomene, in the first year of the seventieth Olympiad. See Plutarch and Diogenes Laert.

{162} Alluding to the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle.

{163a} This was the opinion of Democritus, who held that there were infinite worlds in infinite s.p.a.ce, according to all circ.u.mstances, some of which are not only like to one another, but every way so perfectly and absolutely equal, that there is no difference betwixt them. See Plutarch, and Tully, Quest. Acad.

{163b} Empedocles, of Agrigentum, a Pythagorean; he held that there are two princ.i.p.al powers in nature, amity and discord, and that

"Sometimes by friendship, all are knit in one, Sometimes by discord, severed and undone."

See Stanley's "Lives of the Philosophers."

{163c} Alluding to the doctrine of Pythagoras, according to whom, number is the principle most providential of all heaven and earth, the root of divine beings, of G.o.ds and demons, the fountain and root of all things; that which, before all things, exists in the divine mind, from which, and out of which, all things are digested into order, and remain numbered by an indissoluble series. The whole system of the Pythagoreans is at large explained and ill.u.s.trated by Stanley. See his "Lives of Philosophers."

{164} See our author's "Auction of Lives," where Socrates swears by the dog and the plane-tree.

This was called the [Greek], or oath of Rhadamanthus, who, as Porphyry informs us, made a law that men should swear, if they needs must swear, by geese, dogs, etc. [Greek], that they might not, on every trifling occasion, call in the name of the G.o.ds. This is a kind of religious reason, the custom was therefore, Porphyry tells us, adopted by the wise and pious Socrates. Lucian, however, who laughs at everything here (as well as the place above quoted), ridicules him for it.

{165a} See Homer's "Odyssey," book ix. 1. 302. Pope translates it badly,

"Wisdom held my hand."