Avianus

A kid, the better runner, had happened to outwit a wolf as he made for the fields nearest the neighboring cottages; then, heading straight for the city walls, he took his stand among the woolly flocks. The tireless robber followed him right into the middle of the city and tried to lure him out with contrived tricks: “Don’t you see,” he said, “how in every temple the victim, groaning, stains the cruel ground with its death? Unless you can get yourself back to the safety of the fields, alas, you too will fall with a garland on your brow.” The kid replied, “Please, spare me this worry you claim to feel, and take your cheap threats away with you, you villain; for it will be better to have shed sacred blood for the gods than to glut the jaws of a ravenous wolf.” So, whenever sorrows must be faced and either way means ruin, it is better to have earned a glorious death.

Driven by the winds and squeezed from a heavy cloud, a downpour had burst forth with wintry waters. As it flooded the lands far and wide in a whirling storm, it beat down upon a piece of clay-work set out in the fields; for the warm air first firms the soft clay, so that it may learn to be fired better when fire is applied. Then the storm cloud asked the fragile vessel its name. Forgetting what she was, she said, “I am called an amphora; just now a skilled hand, as the wheel whirled round, gave me a gently curving side.” “You may keep that shape just this long,” he said; “for the rain will dissolve you as you lie beneath it.” And at once, taking in the stream more violently, she crumbled, and, beaten, ran headlong into thin water. Unhappy thing, to take great titles for herself and dare to speak so to the quiver-bearing clouds! Examples like this will be able hereafter to warn the wretched, so that, subject to the great, they may lament their own lot.

A leopard, marked with spots and handsome of breast, went about among his fellow beasts; but because no markings varied the backs of the stately lions, he at once decided theirs was a wretched race. Condemning all other animals for their drab looks, he alone stood as the model of nobility. As he rejoiced in his novel coat, the shrewd fox rebuked him and showed that his markings were vain: “Go on,” she said, “trust all you like in your painted youth, so long as my wisdom can be lovelier; and let us admire those adorned with gifts of the mind more than those who shine with the body’s advantages.”

A soldier worn out by battles had once vowed to give all his arms to the fire set beneath them, both those the dying host had yielded to him as victor and whatever could be taken from a fleeing enemy. In time fortune granted his prayers, and, mindful of his vow, he began to carry his arms one by one to the blazing pyre. Then the trumpet, turning aside the blame with a hoarse murmur, pleaded that it, above all, did not deserve the flames: “No weapon,” it said, “ever struck at your arms that you could claim was driven by my strength; I only rallied arms with breath and calls, and that too—I call the stars to witness—with a subdued sound.” But the soldier added the protesting trumpet to the crackling flames: “Now,” he said, “a greater penalty and pain seize you; for though you yourself can attempt nothing and have dared nothing, you are crueler for this, that you make others do evil.”

A fish, forced out of the fresh pools by a rushing river, was carried headlong into the waters of the sea. There, insolently looking down on the scaly host, he proclaimed himself pre-eminent in noble birth. A seal could not stand this exile from his native waters, and spoke sharp, witty words: “Spare us your empty lies and labored words, which could be refuted even with you as witness. For I will prove which of us is worth more, with the people looking on, if the wet nets haul us in caught together. Then a nobler buyer will purchase me at a high price, while the poor rabble buys you for small change.”

A well-fed dog, they say, met a worn-out lion and spoke to him, slipping in a few jokes: “Don’t you see how my flanks are filled out over a broad back, and my noble chest swells with muscle? After my idle hours I am brought close to men’s tables, and take my fill of the common food. But that cruel iron around my thick throat? It is only so I may not leave the house I guard. You, on the other hand, half dead, roam the vast wilds for a long time until some prey turns up in the woods. So come, put your neck in our chains, so long as you may earn easy meals.” At once the lion, rising into a heavy rage, groaned and, fierce of spirit, gave a noble roar: “Go,” he said, “put the knot on a neck that deserves it, and let hard chains make up for your hunger. But as for me, when my freedom is restored to my empty den, hungry as I may be, I go out into any fields I please. Remember to praise these feasts instead to those who have put freedom after their bellies.”

A handsome calf, frisking about with a neck the yoke had never touched, had seen an ox ceaselessly plowing the fields. “Hey,” he said, “aren’t you ashamed to wear chains on your aged neck, and never to know this leisure of mine with the yoke laid aside, when I am free to roam over the grass below and to go back to the shady woods as I please?” But the old ox, stirred to no anger by his words, kept wearily turning the hard soil with the plowshare, until he could put down the plow and lie softly on a grassy bed in the meadows. Soon he looked back and saw the calf tied at the holy altars, led up close to the sacrificer’s knife. “This is the death,” he said, “that a sorry indulgence has given you, the indulgence that keeps you free of our yoke. So it is better to bear labors, however heavy, than to enjoy, while still young, a leisure soon to end.” This is the lot of men: a swift death is the happier, when long life says no to the wretched.

The story goes that when a monkey bears twins, she divides her offspring into unequal shares: as their mother she raises one with tender love, and swells against the other, glutted with hatred. When some greater alarm begins to frighten her, she snatches up her young on unequal terms: the darling she carries in her arms against her loving breast; the despised one she hoists onto her back, which takes it up. But when she can no longer stand on her weary feet, she lets fall, as she flees, the burden she carried in front. The other, wrapping its arms around her shaggy neck, clings on and escapes along with its unwilling mother. Soon it takes its beloved brother’s place in her kisses as well, saved to be the only heir of its aged grandparents. So what is neglected helps many, and, with the order reversed, hope brings the humble back to better things.

Whoever has let his youth slip by in idleness and did not, with foresight, fear life’s ills beforehand, will, alas, when he is shrunken with age and heavy years have come, often beg in vain for another’s help. An ant set aside for winter the fruits of labor snatched from the sunny days, and stored them in good time in her little holes. But when the earth was covered in white frost and the fields lay hidden under hard ice, the ant, too sluggish now and too small to face such storms, gathered her damp grain in her own home. A faded cicada, who once had split the fields with her plaintive song, humbly begged her for food, saying that she too, while the threshing floor pounded the ripe harvest, had spent the summer days in singing. Then the little ant laughed and spoke to the cicada this way—for they are used to living side by side: “Since I earned my livelihood with the hardest labor, I pass long leisure in the depths of the cold. But all that remains for you now is a last season for dancing, since you spent your earlier life in song.”

A certain man had a goose, fruitful with a precious brood, that often laid golden eggs in her nest. Nature had fixed this law for the proud bird: she might not bring forth two gifts at once. But her master, supposing his greedy hope was slipping away, could not bear the hateful delays to his profits, and thought he would win a great prize from the death of the bird that was so rich in her constant gift. After he had savagely driven the knife through her bare insides and saw that she was empty of her usual offspring, he groaned, cheated by the guilt of so great a fraud: for from it he reaped the penalty he deserved. So it is with those who wickedly demand everything of the gods at one time: the gods, with all the more justice, deny them even their daily prayers.