When Endymion, king of the Moon, devised war upon Phaethon, king of the Sun, he
decreed that a race of spiders as big as the Cyclades should weave a web between
Venus and his lunar dominion, to serve as the battlefield for their regal
rumble. And in that region of the heavens he arrayed his army: the king himself
led his elite Hippo-vultures in the clouds on the right wing, 80,000 strong; his
other cavalry, mounted on giant birds with wings like lettuce leaves, held the
left. The Moon's stalwart infantry held the centre, posted on the spider
web: Millet-launchers and Garlic-fighters, and his light-armed Flea-archers and
Wind-runners, whose long tunics carried them about like sailboats in the fierce
winds of the celestial realm. To Endymion's Hippo-vultures, Phaethon
opposed the Sun's Hippo-ants (and near two hundred feet long were the
insects that bore these cavalry). On the opposite flank of the solar array came
the Air-mosquitoes and the formidable radish-flinging Air-dancers. The spears of
Phaethon's phalanx, in the centre, were stalks of asparagus, and their
round shields were mushrooms. Phaethon's allies, the Cloud-centaurs,
expected at any moment from the Milky Way, had not arrived in time for
battle.