Asinus

If ever I fell down, worn out with carrying my load, that would be the occasion of unendurable suffering. He who ought to have dismounted and given me the assistance of his hand by raising me from the earth, and, if need were, taking off my load, would neither get down nor lift a finger to help me, but from his seat he would batter me with his stick, beginning at my head and ears, until the blows aroused me. And he played an even more intolerable trick on me than this. He collected a fagot of the sharpest thorns, tied them with a cord, and hung them behind on my tail. As may be imagined, they dangled and fell forward against me as I descended the mountain and pricked my hind-quarters till they were covered with wounds. I was helpless to protect myself, for the source of my pain followed me at

Once, when I could no longer bear my many cruel sufferings, I let out at him with my heels, and he never forgot that kick. He was ordered one day to carry some tow from one village to another, so he took me, collected a mass of tow, tied it on my back, and made it fast with an additional and painful strap, brewing a fearful plot against me as he adjusted the load. When it was time to start he stole an ember still hot from the hearth, and when we were at some distance from the house he hid it in the tow. The tow immediately burst into flame-for what else would it do?—and my load was nothing but a huge conflagration. I saw that I should be roasted in an instant, and, coming upon a deep mud-hole in the road, I flung myself into the wettest part of it. There I rolled the tow, and twisted and turned myself until I had sprinkled that hot and painful burden with mud. Then I made the rest of the journey with more safety, for the boy could not set me on fire any more because the tow was mixed with mud. And when he arrived he had the impudence to tell this lie about me: that I had plunged into the fireplace of my own accord

but the villain of a boy invented something much worse than this for me. He took me up the mountain and put a great load of wood on me, but this he sold to a neighboring farmer, and drove me home with no load and no wood, and accused me falsely to his master. "I don't see the good, sir," said he, "of supporting this ass, for he is terribly lazy and slow."

When the master heard this he said, "Well, if he is willing neither to walk nor to carry a load, kill him and give his vitals to the dogs, but save his flesh for the work-people, and if any questions are asked as to the manner of his death lay it to the wolf." The rascally boy, my driver, was charmed, and was for killing me at once,

but in the dead of night a messenger came from the village to the farm, saying that the bride, the one who was stolen by the robbers, had been walking with her bridegroom late in the evening on the sea-shore, when suddenly the sea rose, caught them, and carried them out of sight, and that this was the end of their happiness and their agony. This news, that the house was bereft of its young master and mistress, determined the farm-people to live in slavery no longer. They laid their hands on everything in the house and fled. The master of the horses took me, too, collected all the goods he could, and packed them on me and

There our drivers determined to settle us and themselves, and we beasts were sold at auction by a loud-voiced crier in the middle of the market-place. The by-standers wished to open our mouths and look at them, and they saw the age of each by his teeth. They bought the others one by one, but I was left last of all, and the auctioneer bade them take me home again. "See," he said, "this fellow only has found no master." But fickle Nemesis who whirls our fortunes constantly about brought a master even to me, such as I should not have prayed for. He was an old rascal of the sort who carry the Syrian goddess around among the villages and farms, and make her beg. This man bought me at the handsome price of six dollars!

When we arrived at Philebos's lodging—for this was my purchaser's name he shouted in a loud voice, just before the door, "Little girls, I have bought you a slave, a handsome, stout Cappadocian." These "little girls" were a crowd of abandoned men, coadjutors of Philebos, and they all applauded in

But when they saw his slave was an ass they jeered Philebos and burst out laughing. The next day they got ready for work, as they expressed it, prepared the goddess, and set her on my back. Then we marched out of the city and tramped about the country. Whenever we came into a village, I, the bearer of the goddess, halted, the crowd of flute players blew a frenzied strain, and the others, tearing off their Oriental head-dresses, bending their heads and twisting their necks, would cut their arms with their swords, and each thrusting his tongue outside his teeth, would cut that, too, so that in a moment they would be covered with fresh blood. When I saw these doings I at first stood trembling lest the goddess might sometime have need of asses' blood, too. But after they had mutilated themselves in this way they collected coppers and small silver coins from the surrounding spectators. Some one might add figs and cheese and a jar of wine, or a bushel of wheat or barley for the ass. By these means the company provided for their own maintenance and the service of the goddess whom I carried.