The True History by Lucian (c125-180)

Lucian was apparently a Syrian (in the ancient sense) and probably wrote in Syriac, but all of our records of his work are from Ancient Greek translations. This is a simple, splendid and short satire of the tall tales recorded as truth by ancient writers. He mentions a good many of the writers he has in his sights as the narrative progresses. Wow, what a narrative. Thinking about all the things that might have appeared fascinating and liberating to a mind of those times, Lucian seems to attempt a good proportion of them. Visiting the moon, sailing through air rather than water, all manner of strange creatures, all sorts of exigencies coming out of things being composed of elements they shouldn't - fire-waves, grapes full of milk, dreams being corporeal (and then again not). The satire is fairly straightforward, almost like saying "look, we can all make things up!"; it doesn't appear to me to have lots of layers, but the results are great mind-freeing fun. This 1958 adaptation-translation by Paul Turner appeared while John Cowper Powys was still alive. I wonder if he read it, and it helped to fuel the beautiful crazed short fantasies that he had already begun writing and that constituted his late-life wonder. But I guess, given his predilections, he was probably already all-too-familiar with this book. This is a spirited and airy flowering of nonsense-imagination, stacked full of the gods, heroes, and literary figures like Homer and the ancient historians - lovely releasing stuff.