“In a change of princes the poor change nothing but the name of their master. The truth of this is shown by the following little fable. A timid old man was feeding his ass in a meadow. Alarmed by the shouts of an advancing enemy he urged the ass to fly for fear they should be taken prisoners. But the ass loitered, and said, ‘Pray, do you think that the conqueror will put two pack-saddles on my back?’ ‘No,’ replied the old man. ‘What, then, does it matter to me in whose service I am, so long as I have to carry my load?’”
The well known fable of the Wolf and the Lamb (i. 1) illustrates the unscrupulousness of the informers; and that of the Wolf and the House-dog (iii. 7) teaches how preferable is liberty, even under the greatest privations, to luxury and comfort purchased by submission to the caprices of a master.
Of such a kind were the moral and political lessons which Phædrus enforced in the attractive garb of fables. They were of a general character, suggested by the evils of the times in which he lived.
Another class were suggested by historical events: they were nevertheless severe satirical strictures on individuals. Two may be pointed out as examples which are evidently directed against Tiberius and Sejanus. These are—The Frogs demanding a King, (i. 2;) and the Frogs and the Sun, (i. 6.) Neither of the fables are original; they are apposite applications of two by Æsop.
The Romans,[[1021]] like the frogs in the first of these fables, had exchanged their liberty for the slavery of the empire. In Tiberius, now an imbecile dotard, wholly given up to sensual indulgence in his retreat at Capreæ, they had a perfect King Log. He was utterly careless of the sufferings of his subjects and the administration of his kingdom.
To his odious minister, Sejanus, he intrusted the toils of government, to which his own indolence indisposed him. All tyranny and cruelty were ascribed to the ministers; whilst the effeminate debauchery of the Emperor rendered him, even in that demoralized age, an object of contempt and insult rather than of abhorrence and fear. L. Sejanus, a kinsman of Ælius,[[1022]] employed bald-headed persons, and children with their heads shaved, in the procession of the Floral games, in order to hold up to scorn and derision the bald-headed Emperor, and he dared not take notice of the insult. The infamous Fulcinius Trio in his last will declared that Tiberius had become childish in his old age, and that his continued retirement was nothing else but exile.[[1023]] Pacuvianus was the author of pasquinades against the Emperor. In the same way Phædrus describes the frogs as treating “King Log” with scorn, and as defiling him in the most offensive manner.
But after the death of Sejanus a change took place in the Emperor’s conduct, though not in his character. He left Capreæ for a time, and took up his abode in the Vatican, close to the very walls of Rome. He now gave vent to his savage disposition, and displayed the temper of the water-snake in the fable. His natural cruelty was equalled by his activity. “His sharp tooth seized his unresisting victims one after the other: in vain they fly from death; fear prevents them from uttering a word in defence or expostulation.” No longer a vast expanse of sea and land intervened between the tyrant and his victims. There was nothing to delay the pompous and verbose missives of his bloody purposes: his rescripts could reach the consuls the same day, or at least after the interval of a night: he could behold, as it were, with his own eyes, the reeking hands of the executioners, and the waves of blood which deluged every dwelling.[[1024]] Vengeance not only fell on the guilty Sejanus and his unoffending family, the vilest and the noblest blood of Rome alike flowed at the tyrant’s command. The fable of the Frogs and the Sun was a covert attack upon the ambitious designs of Sejanus. It is sufficiently short to be quoted:
Uxorem quandam Sol quum vellet ducere,
Clamorem Ranæ sustulere ad sidera.
Convicio permotus, quærit Jupiter