How great the virtue.
But Epimenides made it plain in actual experience, teaching that Nature always keeps the fire of life in the animal with but little fuel, for if it get as much as the size of an olive, it needs no more sustenance. Now men in the moon, if men there be, are compactly framed, we may believe, and capable of being nourished on what they get; for the moon herself they say, |D| like the sun who is a fiery body many times larger than the earth, is nourished on the humours coming from the earth, as are the other stars too in their infinite numbers. Light, like them, and simple in their needs, may we conceive those animals to be which the upper region produces. We do not see such animals, nor yet do we see that they require a different region, nature, climate. Supposing that we were unable to approach the sea or touch it, but merely caught views of it in the distance, |E| and were told that its water is bitter and undrinkable and briny, and then some one said that it supports in its depths many great animals with all sorts of shapes, and is full of monsters, to all of whom water is as air to us, he would seem to be making up a parcel of fairy tales; just so is it with us, it seems, and such is our attitude towards the moon, when we refuse to believe that she has men dwelling on her. Her inhabitants, I think, must wonder still more greatly at this earth, a sort of sediment and slime of the universe appearing through damps, and mists, and clouds, a place unlighted, low, motionless; and must ask whether it breeds and supports animals with motion, respiration |F| and warmth. And if they should anyhow have a chance of hearing those lines of Homer:[[362]]
Grim mouldy regions which e’en Gods abhor,
and—
‘Neath hell so far as earth below high heaven,[[363]]
they will say they are written about a place exactly such as this, and that Hades is a colony planted here, and Tartarus, and that there is only one earth—the moon—being midway between the upper regions and these lower ones.’
XXVI. I had scarcely finished speaking when Sylla broke in: ‘Stop, Lamprias, and shut the door on your oratory, lest you run my myth aground before you know it, and make confusion of my drama, which requires another stage and a different setting. Now, I am only its actor, but I will first, if you see no objection, name the poet, beginning in Homer’s[[364]] words: |941|
Far o’er the brine an isle Ogygian lies,
distant from Britain five days’ sail to the West. There are three other islands equidistant from Britain and from one another, in the general direction of the sun’s summer setting. The natives have a story that in one of these Cronus has been |B| confined by Zeus, but that he, having a son for gaoler,[[365]] has been settled beyond those islands and the sea, which they call the Gulf of Cronus. To the great continent by which the ocean is fringed is a voyage of about five thousand stades, made in row-boats, from Ogygia, of less from the other islands, the sea being slow of passage and full of mud because of the number of streams which the great mainland discharges, forming alluvial tracts and making the sea heavy like land, whence an opinion prevailed that it was actually frozen. The coasts of the mainland are inhabited by Greeks living around a bay as large as the Maeotic, with its mouth nearly opposite that of the Caspian |C| Sea. These Greeks speak of themselves as continental, and of those who inhabit our land as islanders, because it is washed all round by the sea. They think that those who came with Hercules and were left behind by him, mingled later on with the subjects of Cronus, and rekindled, so to speak, the Hellenic life which was becoming extinguished and overborne by barbarian languages, laws, and ways of life, and so it again became strong and vigorous. Thus the first honours are paid to Hercules, the second to Cronus. When the star of Cronus, called by us the Shining One, by them, as he told us, the Night Watcher, has reached Taurus again after an interval of thirty years, having for a long time before made preparation for |D| the sacrifice and the voyage, they send forth men chosen by lot in as many ships as are required, putting on board all the supplies and stuff for the great rowing voyage before them, and for a long sojourn in a strange land. They put out, and naturally do not all fare alike; but those who come safely out of the perils of the sea land first on the outlying islands, which are inhabited by Greeks, and day after day, for thirty days, see the sun hidden for less than one hour. This is the night, with a darkness which is slight and of a twilight hue, and has a light over it from the West. There they spend ninety days, |E| meeting with honourable and kindly treatment, and being addressed as holy persons, after which they pass on, now with help from the winds. There are no inhabitants except themselves, and those who have been sent before them. For those who have joined in the service of the God for thirty years are allowed to sail back home, but most prefer to settle quietly in the place where they are, some because they have grown used to it, some because all things are there in plenty without pain or trouble, while their life is passed in sacrifices and festivals, or given to literature or Philosophy. For the natural beauty |F| of the isle is wonderful, and the mildness of the environing air. Some, when they are of a mind to sail away, are actually prevented by the God, who manifests himself to them as to familiars and friends, not in dreams only or by signs, for many meet with shapes and voices of spirits, openly seen and heard. Cronus himself sleeps within a deep cave resting on rock which looks like gold, this sleep being devised for him by Zeus in place of chains. Birds fly in at the topmost part of the rock, and bear him ambrosia, and the whole island is pervaded by the fragrance shed from the rock as out of a well. The spirits of whom we hear serve and care for Cronus, having been his comrades in |942| the time when he was really king over Gods and men. Many are the utterances which they give forth of their own prophetic power, but the greatest and most important they announce when they come down as dreams of Cronus; for the things which Zeus premeditates, Cronus dreams, when sleep has stayed[[366]] the Titanic motions and stirrings of the soul within him, and that which is royal and divine alone remains, pure and unalloyed. |B|
‘Now the stranger, having been received here, as he told us, and serving the God at his leisure, attained as much skill in astronomy as is attainable by the most advanced geometry; of other Philosophy he applied himself to the physical branches. Then, having a strange desire and yearning to see “the Great Island” (for so it appears they call our world), when the thirty years were passed, and the relief parties arrived from home, he said farewell to his friends and sailed forth, carrying a complete equipment of all kinds, and abundant store of provision for the way in golden beakers. All the adventures which befell him, and all the men whose lands he visited, how he met with |C| holy writings and was initiated into all the mysteries, it would take more than one day to enumerate as he did, well and carefully and with all details. Listen now to those which concern our present discussion. He spent a very long time in Carthage.[[367]]... He there discovered certain sacred parchments which had been secretly withdrawn when the older city was destroyed, and had lain a long time in the earth unnoticed; and he said that of all the Gods who appear to us we ought specially to honour the moon with all our substance (and so he charged me to do), because she was most potent in our life.