Asello jussit reliquias poni hordei.
Quas aspernatus ille sic locutus est:
Tuum libenter prorsus appeterem cibum
Nisi, qui nutritus illo est, jugulatus foret.
* * * * *
Majorem turbam punitorum reperies;
Paucis temeritas est bono, multis malo.[[1019]]
“A man who had sacrificed a boar to Hercules, which he had vowed as a thank-offering for his recovery from sickness, ordered the remains of the barley to be given to his ass. The ass rejected it with scorn, and said, ‘I would gladly eat of the food you give me, had not he who was fattened on it had his throat cut.’
“You will find that the majority of those who grow rich by violence and rapine are punished; audacity succeeds with few, but ruins many.”
The continued succession of tyrannical emperors must have taught their oppressed subjects that they had nothing to hope for from a change of those who wore the purple. This truth is imbodied in the fable of the old Peasant and his Ass:——