This fable shows that some people, when satisfying their own personal desires, pretend as if the thing was done without their knowledge, giving the impression that it is not actually a matter of desire, but rather some practical necessity.
Fable 577 (Phaedrus App. 15 = Perry 543)
The Widow and Her Lover
A woman had lost her beloved husband of many years and had laid his body in the ground. It was impossible to tear her away from his grave, and she filled her days with weeping. Everyone repeated glowingly that this woman was an example of a truly faithful wife. Meanwhile, some men who had pillaged the temple of Jupiter were condemned to death for their crime against the god. After they had been crucified, soldiers were stationed by the crosses so that the families of the executed criminals could not recover their bodies. This all took place next to the tomb where the woman had secluded herself. One of the guards happened to be thirsty and asked the woman’s maidservant to bring him some water in the middle of the night. As it happened, the maid had been helping her mistress prepare for bed, as the widow had maintained her vigil long into the night and was still sitting up by the light of the lamp. The door was open just a crack and when the soldier peeped inside, he saw a woman of exceptional beauty. He was immediately enthralled and inflamed with lust, and an irresistible desire began gradually to well up inside him. His crafty ingenuity found a thousand reasons to see the widow again and again. Acquiescing to this regular daily contact, the widow slowly but surely became more and more inclined towards her guest, and soon an even closer bond united her heart to his. While the guard was spending his nights in the widow’s embrace, one of the corpses was spirited away from the cross. The soldier was upset and told the woman what had happened. That exemplary woman said, ‘Don’t worry!’ and with these words, she handed over her husband’s corpse to be nailed to the cross, so that the soldier would not be punished for dereliction of duty.
That is how debauchery besieges a bastion of fair repute.
NOTE: This fable is best known as the ‘Widow of Ephesus’ from the version found in Petronius, Satyricon 111.
Fable 578 (Life of Aesop 129 = Perry 388)
The Ploughman and the Widow
A woman had buried her husband and was sitting beside his tomb, weeping in uncontrollable grief. A man who was ploughing nearby saw the woman and wanted to make love to her. He left his oxen yoked to the plough and approached the woman, pretending to weep. She stopped crying and asked him, ‘Why are you weeping?’ The man answered, ‘I have buried my wife, a wise and good woman. When I weep, I lighten my grief.’ The woman said, ‘I too have lost my husband, and he also was a very good man. When I weep, I lighten the burden of my grief, just as you do.’ The man then said to her, ‘If we have both suffered the same fate and misfortune, why don’t we get to know each other better? I will love you as I loved her, and you will love me as you loved your husband.’ By talking in this way, he managed to win the woman over. When they were busy making love, someone unyoked the man’s oxen and drove them away. When the man realized what had happened and could not find his oxen anywhere, he began to wail as if his very heart were breaking. The woman asked, ‘Why are you crying?’ The man said, ‘Woman, now I really have a reason to weep!’
JOKES ABOUT BALD MEN
Fable 579 (Avianus 10 = Perry 375)
The Bald Horseman
There was a bald horseman who used to attach a wig to his head, wearing other people’s hair on his own bald pate. One day he came to Mars Field, making a great show of himself in his splendid armour. He then began to turn his horse in manoeuvres, easily guiding him with the bridle. At that very moment, the blasts of the North Wind blew against him and made his head a source of laughter for all of the onlookers: the wig was torn aside, revealing the gleam of his bald head, which was an entirely different colour from the hair that had been there before. But the fellow was quick-witted, and when he saw that he was being laughed at by thousands of people, he ingeniously deflected this public derision by making a joke. ‘It’s no surprise that the wig that was put there ran away,’ he said, ‘since my natural-born hair already deserted me once before!’
NOTE: Military training and exercises took place in ‘Mars Field’ (Campus Martius) in Rome, where there was an ancient temple dedicated to Mars, the god of war.
Fable 580 (Chambry 97 = Perry 248)
Diogenes and the Bald Man
A bald man insulted Diogenes the Cynic and Diogenes replied, ‘Far be it from me to make insults! But I do want to compliment your hair for having abandoned such a worthless head.’
NOTE: For another anecdote about Diogenes the Cynic, see Fable 85.
Fable 581 (Phaedrus 5.6 = Perry 528)
The Bald Men and the Comb
A bald man happened to find a comb lying in the street. Another man who also had no hair on his head accosted him and said, ‘Hey, you must share whatever you’ve found!’ The first man showed him the loot and said, ‘The will of the gods is on our side, but fate must have a grudge against us: as the saying goes, we’ve found lumps of coal, not gold!’
This complaint suits a man whose high hopes have played him false.
Fable 582 (Phaedrus 5.3 = Perry 525)
The Bald Man and the Fly
A bald man was bitten on the head by a fly, and when he tried to swat the fly he gave himself a serious slap on the head. Then the fly laughed at the man and said, ‘You wanted to avenge the sting of a tiny little insect by committing murder: what are you going to do to yourself now that you have added insult to your injury?’ The man replied, ‘I can easily forgive myself since I know that I did not try to hurt myself on purpose. As for you, you worthless creature, spawn of a loathsome race of insects who delight in drinking human blood, I would be glad to get rid of you even if it required an even greater inconvenience to myself!’
This shows that a person who commits an accidental crime should be pardoned, while the person who injures someone else on purpose should, in my opinion, be punished as fully as possible.
Fable 583 (Ademar 24 = Perry 560)
The Bald Man and the Gardener
A bald man asked his neighbour, a gardener, to give him some of his pumpkins. The gardener laughed at him and said, ‘Go away, baldy, go away! I’m not giving any of my pumpkins to riffraff like you. Damn you and your baldness, in winter and summer—I hope flies and bugs land all over your bald head and bite you and drink your blood and poop on your head!’ The bald man got angry and drew his sword. He seized the gardener by the hair, intending to kill him, but the gardener grabbed one of his pumpkins and hit the bald man on the head. In the end, the bald man was too strong for him and he cut off the gardener’s head.
For people who do not offer to share their goods when asked, and instead offer only rude words and rebukes.
NOTE: This odd little story seems to be based at least in part on the Latin proverbial expression ‘balder than a pumpkin’ (Apuleius, The Golden Ass 5.9).
Fable 584 (Phaedrus 2.2 = Perry 31)
The Bald Man and His Two Mistresses
There are all kinds of stories showing us how women habitually strip a man of his possessions, regardless of whether they are in love with him or he with them.
There was a woman who had a middle-aged man as her lover, and although she was no spring chicken herself, she concealed her age with exquisite grace. There was also a beautiful young girl who had caught the man’s fancy. Both women wanted to seem a suitable partner for him, so they began plucking out his hair in turn. The man imagined that his looks were being improved by their attentions but in the end he went bald, since the young girl plucked out every one of his gray hairs, while the older woman plucked out all the black ones.
NOTE: See also the 1st-century BCE historian Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 33.7. L’Estrange comments: “Tis a much harder Thing to please two Wives, than two Masters; and he’s a bold Man that offers at it.’
JOKES ABOUT DOCTORS
Fable 585 (Chambry 2
49* = Perry 170)
The Patient and His Symptoms
The doctor asked his patient, ‘How are you feeling?’ The patient said, ‘Woe is me! I’m shivering all over, which has me very worried.’ The doctor assured the patient that this was actually a good sign. The next time the doctor asked the patient how he was doing, the man replied, ‘I feel awful: I’m suffering from a high fever which has me confined to bed.’ Again the doctor said that this was a positive symptom. Finally a member of the man’s family asked, ‘How are you doing, my dear brother? I hope you get well soon!’ The man replied, ‘I’m dying of positive symptoms!’
The fable shows when people want to console someone who is suffering, they usually encourage him by saying things that are not true.
Fable 586 (Chambry 134* = Perry 114)
The Doctor at the Funeral
As a doctor was following the funeral cortège of one of his relatives, he remarked to the mourners in the procession that the man would not have died if he had stopped drinking wine and used an enema. Someone in the crowd then said to the doctor, ‘Hey! This is hardly the time to offer such advice, when it can’t do him any good. You should have given him the advice when he still could have used it!’
The fable shows that friends should offer their help when there is need of it, and not play the wise man after the fact.
NOTE: Compare the Latin joke in Propertius, Elegies 2.14: ‘medicine is now being administered to the ashes’ (i.e. after the cremation of the body). Compare also the English proverb, ‘after death, the doctor’ (e.g., Shakespeare, Henry VIII 3.2.41: ‘he brings his physic after the patient’s death’).
Fable 587 (Babrius 75 = Perry 317)
The Doctor and His Dead Patient
There was once a doctor who knew nothing about medicine. So when everyone was telling a certain sick man, ‘Don’t give up, you will get well; your illness is the sort that lasts for a while, but then you will feel better’, this doctor marched in and declared, ‘I’m not going to play games with you or tell you lies: you need to take care of all your affairs because you are going to die. You cannot expect to live past tomorrow.’ Having said this, the doctor did not even bother to come back again. After a while the patient recovered from his illness and ventured out of doors, although he was still quite pale and not yet steady on his feet. When the doctor ran into the patient, he greeted him, and asked him how all the people down in Hades were doing. The patient said, ‘They are taking it easy, drinking the waters of Lethe. But Persephone and the mighty god Pluto were just now threatening terrible things against all the doctors, since they keep the sick people from dying. Every single doctor was denounced, and they were ready to put you at the top of the list. This scared me, so I immediately stepped forward and grasped their royal sceptres as I solemnly swore that since you are not really a doctor at all, the accusation was ridiculous!’
NOTE: In Greek mythology, Hades is the land of the dead, on the other side of Lethe, the river of forgetfulness; Pluto is the king of Hades and Persephone is queen.
Fable 588 (Phaedrus 1.14 = Perry 475)
The Cobbler and the King
An untalented cobbler had gone completely broke, so he set up shop as a doctor in a town where no one knew him. By marketing an ‘antidote’ with a fictitious name and making all sorts of extravagant claims, the cobbler gained a wide reputation. When the king of the city had grave need of a doctor, he decided to put this man to the test: he called for a goblet, filled it with water, and pretended to mix the doctor’s antidote together with a fatal poison. The king then ordered the doctor to drink the mixture, offering him a reward if he would do so. The prospect of death scared the cobbler into confessing that he had no knowledge of medicine whatsoever and that he had in fact acquired his fame only thanks to universal gullibility. The king then assembled the people and said to them, ‘Are you completely out of your minds? You willingly trusted this man in matters of life and death when he could not even be trusted in matters of boots and shoes!’
I would say this story is well suited to situations in which swindlers take advantage of other people’s foolishness.
NOTE: The punch-line in Latin depends on the dual meaning of caput, both ‘head’ but also ‘life’: the king makes fun of the people for having trusted their heads (lives) to the very man to whom they would not even trust their feet. Cobblers were proverbially incapable of taking up other professions: ‘don’t let the cobbler make pronouncements on anything above the sole’ (Valerius Maximus 8.12.3; cf. the English proverb, ‘let the cobbler stick to his last’).
Fable 589 (Chambry 87* = Perry 57)
The Old Woman and Her Doctor
An old woman suffering from an eye ailment summoned a doctor who charged a certain fee. She told him that if he cured her, she would pay him the specified fee, but if he didn’t cure her, she wouldn’t pay him anything. The doctor began the cure, visiting the woman every day. He would smear an ointment on her eyes, and while the ointment prevented her from seeing, he would take some object from her house and carry it away. He did the same thing day after day. The woman saw that her property was being diminished with each passing day and by the time she was cured, all her household goods were gone. The doctor asked her for the agreed-upon fee, since she was now able to see clearly, and he summoned witnesses to their agreement. The woman protested, ‘I can’t see a thing! Even when my eyes were ailing, I was able to see the many things which I had in my home. Now, when you claim I am cured, I can’t see any of them!’
The fable shows that by their own actions, wicked people can unwittingly serve as witnesses against themselves in a court of law.
ROMAN ANECDOTES
Fable 590 (Phaedrus App. 10 = Perry 538)
Pompey and His Soldier
One of Pompey’s soldiers was a big, strapping fellow, but he spoke with a falsetto and swung his hips like a lady, which made everyone think he was a fairy. One night he laid an ambush for Pompey’s baggage cart, and by leading the mules astray he made off with a great deal of silver and gold and clothing. The story of what the soldier had done quickly spread throughout the camp. Charges were brought and the man was taken off to headquarters where General Pompey asked him, ‘What do you have to say for yourself? Were you in fact the man who robbed me, comrade?’ The soldier immediately spit into his left hand and then shook the spittle off his fingers as he pronounced the following oath: ‘Commander, may my eyeballs dribble out of their sockets just like this spittle if I so much as saw or touched anything that belongs to you.’ Pompey, being an unsuspecting sort of person, simply could not believe that this soldier would have had the courage to commit such a crime, and he ordered him to be taken away as a disgrace to the regiment. A short time later, an enemy soldier challenged one of our Roman soldiers to a fight, absolutely confident that he would win. All the Roman soldiers feared for their lives, and the chief officers were muttering about what to do. Then the soldier who looked like a fairy but who had the strength of Mars himself, approached one of the officers seated on the raised platform and said in his quavering voice, ‘May I?’ Pompey was outraged at this appalling state of affairs and ordered the man to be thrown out, but one of Pompey’s old friends spoke to him and said, ‘I for one think it is better to put this man to the test, since he is entirely dispensable. That would be better than risking a powerful warrior, whose unfortunate loss would be used as proof of your recklessness.’ Pompey agreed and allowed the soldier to accept the challenge. As the army watched in amazement, he cut his opponent’s head off faster than you can say ‘thwack’. Pompey then said to him, ‘Soldier, I gladly award you the victor’s crown, since you have avenged the honour of the Roman forces—but may my eyeballs dribble out of their sockets’ (and Pompey also repeated the filthy gesture which the soldier had used when he had sworn his oath) ‘if you are not the man who stole my baggage cart the other night!’
NOTE: There is a promythium appended to the fable in Perotti’s Appendix: ‘The fable shows how difficult it is t
o know a person.’ Pompey (‘Pompey the Great’) was a Roman politician and general who was defeated and killed in 48 BCE.
Fable 591 (Phaedrus 5.7 = Perry 529)
‘The Prince’
When a fatuous person gets carried away by the slightest breeze of fame and acquires an overly high estimation of his own worth, his ridiculous vanity soon makes him a laughing-stock.
There was a flute-player named Prince who was more or less well-known, since he provided the musical accompaniment for Bathyllus the dancer. At one of their shows, I don’t remember precisely which one, the stage machinery unexpectedly swung around and Prince tumbled down onto the stage. He broke his left leg and fell flat on his face (he must have been playing in the key of B-flat). They picked him up and carted him off the stage as he moaned and groaned. It took him several months to recover. Given that theatre-goers are such a sentimental and devoted lot, they began to miss him; after all, his flute-playing had always roused the dancers to greater heights. A prominent citizen was about to stage a public performance, and now that Prince was again able to walk using a cane, the man persuaded him with invitations (and a fee) to at least put in an appearance on the day of the show. As soon as Prince arrived, rumours of the flute-player’s return buzzed throughout the theatre: while some swore he was dead, others claimed that he was about to show himself to the entire audience in just a moment. Then the curtains parted and there was a thunderous clang announcing the arrival of the gods who made their usual speech, and then the chorus started in with a song that Prince did not recognize, since he had been away from the theatre for several months. The song’s refrain went like this: ‘Rejoice, O Rome: you are safe now that the prince is well!’ The audience stood up to applaud. The flute-player blew kisses to them, thinking that his fans were congratulating him on his recovery. The people in the front row seats realized the man’s foolish mistake and with a roar of laughter they demanded an encore. The song was repeated, and our hero prostrated himself at full-length on the stage. The front rows continued their mock applause, while the crowd thought Prince was simply bowing in honour of the chorus. Eventually, however, the entire audience realized his mistake and at that point the ‘Prince’, dressed in a white gown, his leg wrapped in a white bandage—he even had white shoes on his feet!—was tossed head-first off the stage. His exit met with universal approval, since he had appropriated for himself the honours being paid to the prince of Rome, the divine Caesar himself.
Aesop's Fables Page 34
