Phaedrus

When a weak mind, beguiled by frivolous applause, has once given way to insolent self-sufficiency, such foolish vanity is easily exposed to ridicule.
Princeps, the Flute-player, was pretty well known, being accustomed to accompany Bathyllus with his music on the stage. It chanced that, at a representation, I don’t well remember what it was, while the flying-machine was being whirled along, he fell heavily, through inadvertence, and broke his left leg, when he would much rather have parted with two right ones. He was picked up and carried to his house groaning aloud. Some months pass by before his cure is completed. As is the way with the spectators, for they are a merry race, the man began to be missed, by whose blasts the vigour of the dancer was wont to be kept at full stretch.
A certain Nobleman was about to exhibit a show, just when Princeps was beginning to walk abroad. With a present and entreaties he prevailed upon him merely to present himself on the day of the show. When the day came a rumour about the Flute-player ran through the theatre. Some affirmed that he was dead, some that he would appear before them without delay. The curtain falling, the thunders rolled, and the Gods conversed in the usual form. At this moment the Chorus struck up a song unknown to him who had so recently returned; of which the burthen was this: “Rejoice, Rome, in security, for your prince [Princeps] is well.” All rise with one consent and applaud. The Flute-player kisses hands, and imagines that his friends are congratulating him. The Equestrian order perceive the ridiculous mistake, and with loud laughter encore the song. It is repeated. My man now throws himself sprawling at full length upon the stage. Ridiculing him, the Knights applaud; while the people fancy he is only asking for a chaplet. When, however, the reality came to be known throughout all the tiers, Princeps, his leg bound up with a snow-white fillet, clad in snow-white tunic, and snow-white shoes, while pluming himself on the honors really paid to the Deified House, was thrust out headlong by common consent.

That there is often more good in one man than in a crowd, I will hand down to posterity in a short story.
A man, when dying, left three daughters: one beautiful, hunting men with her eyes; the second a wool-spinner, thrifty, a country girl; the third devoted to wine and very ugly. The old man made their mother his heir on condition that she divide his whole fortune equally among the three, but in this way: “Let them not possess or enjoy what is given them”; then, “As soon as they cease to have the things they have received, let them contribute a hundred thousand sesterces to their mother.” The rumor fills Athens. The anxious mother consults those skilled in law; no one can explain how they are not to possess what has been given or take enjoyment from it, and then how those who have received nothing are to contribute the money. After a long stretch of time had been used up and the meaning of the will could not be made out, the mother set strict law aside and called on good faith. For the wanton she sets aside clothes, women’s finery, silver bathing vessels, eunuchs, smooth-faced boys; for the wool-spinner, plots of land, flocks, a farmhouse, laborers, oxen, draft animals, and farm equipment; for the drinker, a storeroom full of old wine jars, an elegant house, and charming little gardens. When she was about to give these allotted portions to each, and the people, who knew the daughters, approved, Aesop suddenly took his stand in the middle of the crowd: “Oh, if the buried father still had any feeling, how hard he would take it that the Athenians had been unable to interpret his wishes!” Then, when asked, he cleared up everyone’s mistake: “Give the house and its furnishings, with the lovely gardens and the old wines, to the country wool-spinner; assign the clothes, the pearls, the footmen, and the rest to the one who spends her life in luxury; present the fields, the ox-stall, and the flocks with their shepherds to the wanton. None of them will be able to bear keeping anything foreign to her own habits. The ugly one will sell the finery to buy wine; the wanton will throw away the fields to wear fine adornment; and the one who delights in flocks and is devoted to wool will part with the house of luxury at whatever price. So none will possess what has been given, and they will contribute the stated money to their mother out of the price of the things each has sold.”
Thus the shrewdness of a single man found what had escaped the shortsightedness of many.

There remain things for me to write, but I hold back deliberately: first, so that I may not seem too troublesome to you, who are pulled in different directions by the variety of many affairs; then, so that if anyone perhaps wishes to attempt the same, he may have some work left over; although there is such an abundant supply of material that the craftsman would fail the labor, not the labor the craftsman. I ask that you pay the reward for my brevity that you promised; make good your word. For life is nearer to death every day, and the less of your gift will come back to me, the more time delay consumes. If you settle the matter quickly, the use of it will be longer; I shall enjoy it longer if I begin sooner. While some remnants of my failing life remain, there is room for help: some day your kindness will strive in vain to aid a man enfeebled by old age, when he has ceased to be able to profit from a favor and Death, close at hand, demands what is owed. I think it foolish to ply you with prayers, since you are of your own accord inclined to compassion. A defendant who confessed has often obtained pardon; how much more justly ought it to be granted to the innocent? The role is yours now; it was others’ before; then, in a like circuit, others’ turns will come. Decide as conscience and good faith allow, so that I may rejoice that your judgment has upheld me. My mind goes beyond the limit I set myself; but a spirit is hard to restrain when, conscious of its unblemished integrity, it is weighed down by the insolence of guilty men. You ask who they are. They will appear in time. As for me, the maxim I once read as a boy—“For a commoner to mutter in public is a crime”—I shall remember well as long as my sanity holds.

It is dangerous alike to believe or to disbelieve. Of either fact, I will briefly lay before you an instance.
Hippolytus met his death, because his step-mother was believed: because Cassandra was not believed, Troy fell. Therefore, we ought to examine strictly into the truth of a matter, rather than suffer an erroneous impression to pervert our judgment. But, that I may not weaken this truth by referring to fabulous antiquity, I will relate to you a thing that happened within my own memory.
A certain married Man, who was very fond of his Wife, having now provided the white toga for his Son, was privately taken aside by his Freedman, who hoped that he should be substituted as his next heir, and who, after telling many lies about the youth, and still more about the misconduct of the chaste Wife, added, what he knew would especially grieve one so fond, that a gallant was in the habit of paying her visits, and that the honor of his house was stained with base adultery. Enraged at the supposed guilt of his Wife, the husband pretended a journey to his country-house, and privately stayed behind in town; then at night he suddenly entered at the door, making straight to his Wife’s apartment, in which the mother had ordered her son to sleep, keeping a strict eye over his ripening years. While they are seeking for a light, while the servants are hurrying to and fro, unable to restrain the violence of his raging passion, he approaches the bed, and feels a head in the dark. When he finds the hair cut close, he plunges his sword into the sleeper’s breast, caring for nothing, so he but avenge his injury. A light being brought, at the same instant he beholds his son, and his chaste wife sleeping in her apartment; who, fast locked in her first sleep, had heard nothing: on the spot he inflicted punishment on himself for his guilt, and fell upon the sword which a too easy belief had unsheathed. The accusers indicted the woman, and dragged her to Rome, before the Centumviri. Innocent as she was, dark suspicion weighed heavily against her, because she had become possessor of his property: her patrons stand and boldly plead the cause of the guiltless woman. The judges then besought the Emperor Augustus that he would aid them in the discharge of their oath, as the intricacy of the case had embarrassed them. After he had dispelled the clouds raised by calumny, and had discovered a sure source of truth: “Let the Freedman,” said he, “the cause of the mischief, suffer punishment; but as for her, at the same instant bereft of a son, and deprived of a husband, I deem her to be pitied rather than condemned. If the father of the family had thoroughly enquired into the charge preferred, and had shrewdly sifted the lying accusations, he would not, by a dismal crime, have ruined his house from the very foundation.”
Let the ear despise nothing, nor yet let it accord implicit belief at once: since not only do those err whom you would be far from suspecting, but those who do not err are sometimes falsely and maliciously accused.
This also may be a warning to the simple, not to form a judgment on anything according to the opinion of another; for the different aims of mortals either follow the bias of their goodwill or their prejudice. He alone will be correctly estimated by you, whom you judge of by personal experience.
These points I have enlarged upon, as by too great brevity I have offended some.

If you wish to read the little books of Phaedrus, Eutychus, you must be free from business, so that your mind, at liberty, may feel the force of the verse. “But,” you say, “your talent is not worth so much that a moment of an hour should be lost to my duties.” Then there is no reason for your hands to touch what is not suited to busy ears. Perhaps you will say: “Some holidays will come that will call me to study with an unburdened heart.” Will you, I ask, read worthless trifles rather than spend your care on your household affairs, give your time back to your friends, attend to your wife, relax your mind, and give your body rest, so that you may take up your accustomed round of duty more vigorously? You must change your purpose and your way of life if you mean to cross the threshold of the Muses. I, whom my mother bore on the Pierian ridge, where holy Mnemosyne, nine times fruitful, bore to Jove the Thunderer the chorus of the arts—though I was born almost in the school itself, have scraped all care for possessions out of my heart, and have not given myself to this life against the will of Pallas—am nevertheless received into their company only grudgingly. What do you think happens to the man who strives with every waking hour to heap up great wealth, preferring sweet gain to learned labor?
But now—“whatever may come of it,” as Sinon said when he had been brought before the king of Dardania—I will write out a third book with Aesop’s stylus, dedicating it to your honor and your merits. If you read it, I shall be glad; if not, posterity at least will have something to delight them.
Now I will briefly explain why the genre of fables was invented. Slavery, being at another’s mercy, did not dare to say what it wished, and so it transferred its own feelings into little fables and slipped past false accusation by means of made-up jests. Where it left a footpath, I have made a road, and have thought out more than it had left behind, choosing some themes to my own ruin. But if the accuser were anyone other than Sejanus—if the witness were another, and the judge another too—I would admit that I deserved such great misfortunes, and would not be soothing my pain with these remedies. If anyone goes astray through his own suspicion and, seizing for himself what will be common to all, foolishly lays bare his conscience, I would nonetheless wish to be held excused by him. For it is not my intention to brand individuals, but to show life itself and the ways of men. Perhaps someone will say that I have undertaken a weighty task. If Aesop the Phrygian, if Anacharsis the Scythian could found an everlasting fame by their genius, why should I, who am nearer to lettered Greece, abandon my country’s glory in idle sleep, when the Thracian race counts gods as its forebears, and Apollo is the parent of Linus, and a Muse of Orpheus, who moved rocks with his song, tamed wild beasts, and held back the rush of the Hebrus with sweet delay? So keep away from here, Envy, lest you groan in vain, since the customary glory will now be granted to me.
Have I induced you to read? I ask that you give me your sincere judgment with your well-known candor.

He who brings help to the wicked regrets it before long.
A man picked up a snake stiff with cold and warmed it in his bosom, compassionate to his own harm; for as soon as it had revived, it killed the man at once. When another snake asked it the reason for this crime, it replied: “So that no one may learn to do good to the wicked.”

If I bring in Aesop’s name anywhere—to whom I long ago paid all that I owed—know that it is for the sake of authority, as certain artists do in our own age, who find a higher price for their works if they have inscribed Praxiteles on their new marble, Myron on their worn silver, Zeuxis on their painting. So much more does biting envy favor a counterfeit antiquity than present merit. But now I turn to a fable that gives an example of this.

Many things still remain that I could tell, and there is an abundant wealth of varied subjects; but witticisms are pleasant in moderation and offensive in excess. Therefore, most upright Particulo—a name that will live in my pages as long as Latin letters keep their value—if not my talent, at least approve my brevity, which deserves commendation all the more justly the more tiresome poets are.

A dog, bold against all the swift wild beasts, had always given his master satisfaction, but as the years weighed on him he began to flag. Once, set against a bristly boar in a fight, he seized its ear, but with his decayed teeth he let the prey go. Then the hunter, vexed, scolded the dog. The old dog barked back at him: “It is not my courage that has failed you, but my strength. You praise what we were, if you now condemn what we are.” Why I have written this, Philetus, you see very well.

A bull, struggling with his horns in a narrow doorway, could barely get in to the manger, and a calf began showing him how to twist himself. “Quiet,” said the bull, “I knew this before you were born.”
Let him who corrects a wiser man think this is said to him.