Nearly two millennia before rockets ever launched, a writer in the Roman Empire imagined battles in space, Moon cities, and cosmic travel. Around 175 CE, Lucian of Samosata wrote True History, a satirical narrative that sent its characters to the stars, armed with turnips and riding giant fleas.
A whirlwind lifted Lucian’s travelers into space, where they landed on the Moon and were caught in a war between lunar and solar kingdoms over a colony on Venus. Warriors fought on winged acorns, and deaths in battle stained the clouds red. After the war, they explored other worlds.
Lucian described the Moon’s society as male-only, with births occurring from calves, and bodies with one toe. While meant as satire, the book featured tropes now common in science fiction: alien life, interplanetary conflict, and flight beyond Earth—long before the telescope or space theory emerged.
Lucian’s work influenced later thinkers like Johannes Kepler, who read True History in Greek and credited it with inspiring his own lunar fiction. Though it lacks science as we know it, the story reflected philosophical ideas of the time and imagined cosmic journeys still relevant today.
Nearly 2,000 years ago, Lucian of Samosata wrote True History, a tale about space travel, war, and bizarre life forms. In it, a ship is caught in a whirlwind and lands on the Moon, where its crew gets caught in a war between Moon and Sun armies, both fighting over Venus…🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/geZERVSzuP
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