Loukios, or the Ass (30-32)

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."