[729] There is an unpublished story which I heard narrated at Antignano, near Leghorn, of a mother who has a silly son named Pipetta. The latter asks his mother for a quattrino (a small coin) to buy a vetch, and afterwards a bean, because it grows higher; he sows it, and it attains a marvellous height. Climbing up the bean-stalk he comes to the gates of paradise, which are opened to him, but St Peter sends him back; he then finds the entrance to hell, which he wishes to visit. The devil shows him all the sights; the two then play at cards, and Pipetta wins a sackful of souls. The devil fears that Pipetta will empty hell, so he allows him to depart with the sack, and an ass which throws gold from its tail; he mounts up to heaven, and consigns the sack of souls to St Peter. The story ends with the usual exchange of asses at the inn where Pipetta sleeps upon his descent from the beanstalk.
[730] Biblion Istorikon, i. 116.—It is added, that when Titus remonstrated with his father on his avarice, Vespasian made him smell the gold for which the horse's dung had been sold, asking him whether it smelt bad.—In the Mongol story we saw the fool who goes out with his ass and hides it in a cavern afterwards despoiling a merchant's caravan.—Tzetzas, i. 128, records the existence in Phrygia of a village called "Ass's-ears" (ê klêsis onou ôta), inhabited by robbers, and belonging to Midas; he thinks, moreover, that Midas was surnamed the large-eared on account of this village of his.
[731] vi. 105.
[732] Kleitas onôn hekatombas, xi. 51.
[733] In Anton. Liberalis we find a long narrative from which we gather that Apollo would only suffer the ass to be sacrificed to him among the Hyperboreans.
[734] I read on this subject in the curious volume Laus Asini, printed at Leyden by Elzevir, the following notice: "Si quis graviter a scorpione ictus, id in aurem insusurret asino, ex tempore curetur."
"Te senior turpi sequitur Silenus asello
Turgida pampineis redimitus tempora sertis
Condita lascivi deducunt orgya mystæ."
—Seneca, Œdipus.
[736] Tam ûhathur nâubhir âtmanvatîbhir antarikshaprudbhir apodakâbhiḥ; strophe 3.—Cfr. strophe 4th and 5th of the same hymn.
[737] Another reason is also assigned for the honour given to the ass in heaven: the ass and Priapos contend together as to who is superior; Priapos defeats the ass, and Dionysos takes pity upon the vanquished, and places it in heaven among the stars.