So after realizing that we too may visit the Isles of the Blessed and the Wicked, may soar up to Aristophanes’ Cloudcuckooland or dive under the sea in the brother of Jonah’s whale, or see Sinbad’s roc, let us begin at the beginning. Let the lights go out and the curtain go up. Let us watch breathlessly an ancient Walt Disney fantasy rush across the screen. The very names of countries and peoples add to the excitement as the panorama unrolls. And so vivid are Lucian’s descriptions that as in all good movies soon we find ourselves participating in his adventures. Having set out from the Pillars of Hercules with fifty men on a good ship, on the eightieth day we come to a wooded island. Here huge footprints and an inscription reveal that Hercules and Dionysus were here before us. And no wonder, for this is the Isle of Wines: grape-vines produce springs of wine, springs feed rivers, rivers produce fish that eaten make people drunk. And there is a species of vine that is half grape and half lady like Daphne turning into a laurel and the kiss of the Vine-woman brings intoxication and her embrace is a prison. We lost two of our men to that captivity.
As we set sail, a whirlwind lifted the ship and she became a hydroplane, sailing through the air for seven days and seven nights. The island where then we landed proved to be the Moon. Endymion is the King so of course he spoke Greek and we at once joined his forces for he had a war on with the Men of the Sun, whose King is Phaethon. It was all about which should colonize the Morning Star. Our fellow Moonites were as strange as their names: Vulture Knights, Grass Plumes, Pea Shooters, Garlic Warriors, Flea Bowmen, Wind Aviators, Corn Sparrows and Crane Knights. And Phaethon’s Heliotes were as fantastic: Ant Knights, Mosquito Aviators, Dance Aviators, Stalk Mushrooms, Dog-faced Knights, Cloud Centaurs. A fierce battle we had and the Men of the Sun won because they cut off light from the Moon so Endymion surrendered. We saw strange marvels in our stay on the Moon: how men are the child-bearers; how their clothing is made of glass or bronze; their eyes are removable; they have a mirror over a well in which they can see what happens in far distant lands.
As we voyaged onward, we came to many other countries: to the Morning Star which was just being colonized, to Lamp Town where among the inhabitants Lucian found his own Lamp which gave him news of home, to Cloudcuckooland which Aristophanes described so truthfully. But after such interesting scenes, disaster fell upon us. A monstrous whale bore down upon us and in a trice swallowed us, ship and all.
When we recovered from our terror, we found that life inside a whale is confined but not impossible. We discovered an island where we beached our boat. The whale opened his mouth once an hour so we could mark time and get the points of the compass. And we soon met other men there, a Cypriote called Scintharus and his son. Scintharus told us about the other inhabitants of the whale, who were savage barbarians, and always ready to attack them. We thought best to join Scintharus in subduing these enemies, but the fight was fierce for there were scores of these Lobsters, Crabhands, Tunnyheads, Seagoats, Crawfish Coots and Solefish. After our victory, we lived fairly well in the whale for a year and eight months. In the ninth month, we saw through the teeth of our monster the most terrifying battle, a sea-fight between men riding on huge islands each of which carried about one hundred and twenty.
In spite of seeing such dangers outside, we decided finally that we must escape from our prison. We used fire as a weapon, set the forest at the tail-end aflame and after twelve days found that the whale was going to die. Just in time we propped open his mouth with huge beams and the next day when he expired, out we went on our good ship and felt once more the wind in our sails. Fair weather did not last long. A terrible northern gale descended and froze all the sea to a depth of six fathoms. Scintharus, who was now our ship-master, saved us by directing us to excavate a cave-home in the ice. In it we lived for thirty days, building a fire and cooking the fish we cut out of the ice. When food gave out, we dug out the boat and sailed over the ice as though it were the sea until on the fifth day we came to open water. Now we kept coming to various islands. We got water at one and at the next one milk, for this island had grapes whose juice was milk, and its earth was cheese. It was easy to subsist there! Next we passed the Isle of Cork where the city is built on a cork foundation and the men have feet of cork so that they can run over the waters as they will, buoyed up by their own life-preservers!
Happiest of all our stays was that on the Island of the Blessed. Here it is always spring. Every month the vines yield grapes and the trees fruit. It is a land flowing with milk and wine. Glass trees furnish goblets which fill automatically at the banquet. Baked loaves of bread are plucked from trees. Beside the table are two springs, one of laughter, one of joy, and with draughts from these the banqueters start their revels. Famous men dwell there. I saw Socrates surrounded by fair young men arguing with Nestor and Palamedes. Plato preferred to live in his own Republic. The followers of Aristippus and Epicurus were considered the best of companions, but Diogenes the Cynic had reformed, married Lais and taken to dancing. The Stoics had not yet arrived for they were still toiling up the steep hill of virtue. Conversation with Homer was one of the greatest pleasures, especially as he settled the matter of his birthplace by declaring himself a Babylonian and solved the Homeric question by affirming that he had written all the lines attributed to him. Beside literary talks, there were games for the Dead.
Even the Island of the Blessed could not be free from wars, for the Wicked invaded it and had to be expelled by force. Homer wrote a new epic on the fight of the dead heroes. The Island had its scandals too all due again to Helen. For she bewitched Scintharus’ son and tried to elope with him, but was caught. That episode caused our expulsion from the Island of the Blessed. Before we left, Homer wrote a couplet for Lucian which he had carved on a stele of beryl and Odysseus secretly gave him a letter for Calypso.
We touched at the Isle of the Wicked and at the Isle of Dreams, where we slept thirty days and next we put in at Ogygia. Lucian read Odysseus’ letter before he delivered it to Calypso and found he had always regretted leaving her! For Odysseus’ sake, Calypso entertained us royally.
Next we fell into danger from the Pumpkin Pirates and the Hardshell Pirates and the Dolphin-Riders, but we escaped them all. One night we ran aground on the marvellous and mighty nest of a king-fisher. And a little further on in the sea we came to a forest of rootless trees which we could not penetrate. There was nothing to do but haul the ship up to their tops and take “a forest cruise” across. More marvellous still we had to cross a water-chasm on a water bridge, a river-way between two water precipices. After that we came to the Isle of the Bellowing Bullheads, men like Minotaurs, and had some skirmishes with them. And then we came to an Island of Fair Ladies who wished to take us to bed with them, but Lucian discovered that they all had ass-legs and that they ate strangers when they had cozened them to sleep. So we departed in haste. At dawn we saw the land which is on the other side of the world from ours and there we were shipwrecked. What happened there will be another story.
This review of the two books of Lucian’s True History reveals at once its startling differences from the other Greek romances of the early Empire. Romantic love does not figure in it. Religion has little or no place in it. Adventures are its bones and sinews. These adventures though described realistically are all figments of the imagination, explorations of the Wonderful Things beyond Thule as much as those of Antonius Diogenes must have been. The coloring of the pictures is an amazing mixture of realism and fantasy. The veracity of sense impressions almost converts doubting Thomases. Lucian comes to seem no mean rival of Herodotus, the Father of Lies. Only occasionally some satiric laughter betrays him.