Menippus
I had only flown a couple of hundred yards, when Selene’s feminine voice reached me: ‘Menippus, do me an errand to Zeus, and I will wish you a pleasant journey.’ ‘You have only to name it,’ I said, ‘provided it is not something to carry.’ ‘It is a simple message of entreaty to Zeus. I am tired to death, you must know, of being slandered by these philosophers; they have no better occupation than impertinent curiosity about me—What am I? how big am 1? why am I halved? why am I gibbous? Iam inhabited; I am just a mirror hung over the sea; I am—whatever their latest fancy suggests. It is the last straw when they say my light is stolen, sham, imported from the sun, and keep on doing their best to get up jealousy and ill feeling between brother and sister. They might have been contented with making him out a stone or a red-hot lump.
