Now after having seen what a wag Lucian is from his own words, we must decide how we are going to take him. Are we to seek in him relaxation and entertainment (the gift of all true romance) or are we going to marshal our “little learning” to meet his and study all his sources, his parodies of historians and philosophers, or search for allegories in his fantastic worlds? The happy way will be along the path of the golden mean. Gildersleeve put up a sign-board to it and inscribed directions for future travellers. “To enjoy the show properly, it is far better for the reader to give himself up to this play of Lucian’s fancy than to endeavor to unriddle whatever satire of contemporary literature may lie concealed in its allegory.... There may be profound meaning in the war which breaks out between the Sunburghers under Phaêthon, and the Moonburghers under Endymion, which begins with the attempt of the Moonburghers to found a colony on the desert planet of Lucifer, and which ends with the victory of the Sunburghers, Lucifer being declared common property and the vanquished compelled to pay an annual tribute of ten thousand _amphoreis_ of dew. But so elastic are all such allegories that they can be stretched to fit anything, and the war of these Heliotes and Selenites would answer to describe the conflict between orthodoxy and rationalism, and Lucifer would stand for the coming man. But how much better to look with childish interest on the marshalling of Horsevultures and Chickpeashooters and Garlickfighters and Flea-archers and Wind-runners, and to watch the huge spiders spin their web from the moon to Lucifer.”[327] 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.