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The Ass and His Masters

[These versions are not exactly the same fable, but are similar enough to be included on the same page.]

Townsend version

An ass, belonging to an herb-seller who gave him too little food and too much work made a petition to Jupiter to be released from his present service and provided with another master. Jupiter, after warning him that he would repent his request, caused him to be sold to a tile-maker. Shortly afterwards, finding that he had heavier loads to carry and harder work in the brick-field, he petitioned for another change of master. Jupiter, telling him that it would be the last time that he could grant his request, ordained that he be sold to a tanner. The Ass found that he had fallen into worse hands, and noting his master's occupation, said, groaning: "It would have been better for me to have been either starved by the one, or to have been overworked by the other of my former masters, than to have been bought by my present owner, who will even after I am dead tan my hide, and make me useful to him."

L'Estrange version (Asses to Jupiter)

The asses found themselves once so intolerably oppressed, with cruel masters, and heavy burdens, that they sent their ambassadors to Jupiter with a petition for redress. Jupiter found the request unreasonable, and so gave them this answer: That humane society could not be preserv'd without carrying burdens some way or other: so that if they would but joyn, and piss up a river, that the burdens which they now carry'd by land might be carried by water, they should be eas'd of that grievance. This set them all a pissing immediately, and the humour is kept up to this very day, that whenever one ass pisses, the rest piss for company.

Moral

'Tis the uttermost degree of madness and folly, to appeal from providence and nature.

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