Loukios, or the Ass (43-45)

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