Loukios, or the Ass (42-46)

The next day they decided to sell the prisoners' goods and me, and they disposed of me to a stranger from a neighboring village, a baker by trade. He took possession of me, bought ten bushels of wheat, which he placed on my back, and drove me home to his own house over a hard road. When we arrived he led me into the mill, where I beheld a great crowd of beasts, my fellow-slaves, and a great number of mills, all turned by them, and everything was covered with flour. They left me there in idleness that day,

Well, I grew very thin and weak in body, till my master decided to sell me, and he disposed of me to a man who was a market-gardener by trade, for he had rented a garden to cultivate. This was our daily work: My master would load me with vegetables early in the morning, and take them to the market. Having disposed of them to the dealers, he would drive me back to the garden. Then he would fall to digging and planting and watering, while I stood idle. Still this life was terribly hard for me. In the first place, when winter came my master could not afford coverings for himself, and still less for me; and I trod barefoot through the slimy mud and over the hard, rough, frozen roads; and the only food

One day, when we were setting out for the town, we happened upon a fine-looking man in a soldier's uniform, who began to address us in the Latin tongue, and asked the gardener whither he was driving me, the ass. My master, not understanding the language, I suppose, made no reply. The other grew angry at what he thought an insult, and struck with his whip at the gardener, who thereupon closed with him, twirled him off his legs, and stretched him in the road. As he lay there he pounded him with hands and feet, and a stone from the road. The soldier at first resisted, and threatened that when he got on his feet he would kill the gardener with his sword; but my master, being thus instructed from the very lips of his foe, chose the safer part, drew the sword from him and hurled it to a distance. Then he fell to pounding him again where he lay. The soldier, seeing that his plight was already past bearing, pretended to be killed by the blows. This frightened the gardener, so that he left him lying there just as he was, carried off the sword, and rode away on me to the town.

When we were arrived there he confided the charge of the garden to a partner of his, and, fearing possible danger from the affair in the road, he hid himself and me in the house of one

I do not know what happened the next day to my master the gardener, but the soldier determined to sell me, and parted with me for five dollars. The purchaser was a servant to a very rich man of Thessalonika, the largest town in Macedonia. His trade was to cook meats for his master, and he had a brother, a fellow-slave, who understood bread - baking and the flavoring of honey - cakes. These brothers were messmates always, lodged in the same house, held the tools of their trade as common property, and finally installed me, too, in their lodging. After the master's dinner these two used to bring home a quantity of fragments, the one of meats and fish, the other of bread and cakes. They would shut me in with these, leaving me the delightful task of guarding them while they went to bathe. And I, bidding farewell with all my heart to my portion of barley, would devote myself to the skill and earnings of my masters, and so for a long time I revelled in human food. At first, when they returned, they used to take no notice of my carnivorous tendency, because there was such a multitude of dishes, and because I still stole my dinner