Friend.

It must have been very entertaining; let us have it all, I desire.

Menippus.

I had much ado to see, to relate it to you is impossible; it was like Homer’s shield, {173} on one side were feasting and nuptials, on the other haranguing and decrees; here a sacrifice, and there a burial; the Getae at war, the Scythians travelling in their caravans, the Egyptians tilling their fields, the Phoenicians merchandising, the Cilicians robbing and plundering, the Spartans flogging their children, and the Athenians perpetually quarrelling and going to law with one another.

When all this was doing, at the same time, you may conceive what a strange medley this appeared to me; it was just as if a number of dancers, or rather singers, were met together, and every one was ordered to leave the chorus, and sing his own song, each striving to drown the other’s voice, by bawling as loud as he could; you may imagine what kind of a concert this would make.

Friend.

Truly ridiculous and confused, no doubt.

Menippus.

And yet such, my friend, are all the poor performers upon earth, and of such is composed the discordant music of human life; the voices not only dissonant and inharmonious, but the forms and habits all differing from each other, moving in various directions, and agreeing in nothing; till at length the great master {175a} of the choir drives everyone of them from the stage, and tells him he is no longer wanted there; then all are silent, and no longer disturb each other with their harsh and jarring discord.  But in this wide and extensive theatre, full of various shapes and forms, everything was matter of laughter and ridicule.  Above all, I could not help smiling at those who quarrel about the boundaries of their little territory, and fancy themselves great because they occupy a Sicyonian {175b} field, or possess that part of Marathon which borders on Oenoe, or are masters of a thousand acres in Acharnae; when after all, to me, who looked from above, Greece was but four fingers in breadth, and Attica a very small portion of it indeed.  I could not but think how little these rich men had to be proud of; he who was lord of the most extensive country owned a spot that appeared to me about as large as one of Epicurus’s atoms.  When I looked down upon Peloponnesus, and beheld Cynuria, {176a} I reflected with astonishment on the number of Argives and Lacedemonians who fell in one day, fighting for a piece of land no bigger than an Egyptian lentil; and when I saw a man brooding over his gold, and boasting that he had got four cups or eight rings, I laughed most heartily at him:  whilst the whole Pangaeus, {176b} with all its mines, seemed no larger than a grain of millet.

Friend.

A fine sight you must have had; but how did the cities and the men look?

Menippus.