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o READERS or" the second-century Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata the view of the earth from the surface of the moon is no new phenomenon.His character Menippus, the Cynic philosopher, harnessed to a vulture's left wing and an eagle's right, paused at the moon on a flight from Olympus to Heaven and obtained from it a telescopic insight into the activities of men, swarming below like ants in an ant-hill.1 The synoptic vision of the xaTáov-oTtoc, the observer from on high, was conventionally used by the Cynics to belittle human concerns: 2 in another of Lucian's dialogues Menippus reduces life to the scale of a pageant in which Fortune dresses the actors for their brief and changing roles {Menippus, 16).But Lucian's interest in this device went further than parody of a Cynic trope.His Platonist philosopher Nigrinus also sits high in the theatre to obtain a better view (Nigrinus, 18).'What we need,' says Hermes to Charon, 'is a high place somewhere with a good view in all directions' (Charon, 2).Lucian's writings span many years and many genres but almost all reflect in some way his search for a detached point of vantage, a rejection of prior commitments, a compulsion to get out in order to look in.The most apparently serious of his philosophical dialogues, Hermotimus, argues for scepticism on the ground that no choice of philosophy can be valid without experience of all.And detachment, he implies, is as necessary for the artist as for the philosopher.The creator of the universe must have stood outside it (Icaromenippus, 8).Lucian is scornful of musicians and men of letters who sell themselves to patrons (The Dependent Scholar, 4), of actors who over-identify with their roles (0/Pantomime, 82-4).His revival of the dialogue-form, often using speakers from history or Homeric myth, provided 1 Icaromenippus, 11-19.
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