One word more on asses. It is said that in Mesopotamia they are warlike and that Mervan, the twenty-first caliph, was surnamed "the Ass" for his valor.
The patriarch Photius relates, in the extract from the Life of Isidorus, that Ammonius had an ass which had a great taste for poetry, and would leave his manger to go and hear verses. The fable of Midas is better than the tale of Photius.
Machiavelli's Golden Ass.
Machiavelli's ass is but little known. The dictionaries which speak of it say that it was a production of his youth; it would seem, however, that he was of mature age; for he speaks in it of the misfortunes which he had formerly and for a long time experienced. The work is a satire on his contemporaries. The author sees a number of Florentines, of whom one is changed into a cat, another into a dragon, a third into a dog that bays the moon, a fourth into a fox who does not suffer himself to be caught; each character is drawn under the name of an animal. The factions of the house of Medicis and their enemies are doubtless figured therein; and the key to this comic apocalypse would admit us to the secrets of Pope Leo and the troubles of Florence. This poem is full of morality and philosophy. It ends with the very rational reflections of a large hog, which addresses man in nearly the following terms:
Ye naked bipeds, without beaks or claws.
Hairless, and featherless, and tender-hided,
Weeping ye come into the world—because
Ye feel your evil destiny decided;
Nature has given you industrious paws;
You, like the parrots, are with speech provided;
But have ye honest hearts?—Alas! alas!
In this we swine your bipedships surpass!
Man is far worse than we—more fierce, more wild—
Coward or madman, sinning every minute;
By frenzy and by fear in turn beguiled,
He dreads the grave, yet plunges headlong in it;
If pigs fall out, they soon are reconciled;
Their quarrel's ended ere they well begin it.
If crime with manhood always must combine,
Good Lord! let me forever be a swine.
This is the original of Boileau's "Satire on Man," and La Fontaine's fable of the "Companions of Ulysses"; but it is quite likely that neither La Fontaine nor Boileau had ever heard of Machiavelli's ass.
The Ass of Verona.
I must speak the truth, and not deceive my readers. I do not very clearly know whether the Ass of Verona still exists in all his splendor; but the travellers who saw him forty or fifty years ago agree in saying that the relics were enclosed in the body of an artificial ass made on purpose, which was in the keeping of forty monks of Our Lady of the Organ, at Verona, and was carried in procession twice a year. This was one of the most ancient relics of the town. According to the tradition, this ass, having carried our Lord in his entry into Jerusalem, did not choose to abide any longer in that city, but trotted over the sea—which for that purpose became as hard as his hoof—by way of Cyprus, Rhodes, Candia, Malta, and Sicily. There he went to sojourn at Aquilea; and at last he settled at Verona, where he lived a long while.
This fable originated in the circumstance that most asses have a sort of black cross on their backs. There possibly might be an old ass in the neighborhood of Verona, on whose back the populace remarked a finer cross than his brethren could boast of; some good old woman would be at hand to say that this was the ass on which Christ rode into Jerusalem; and the ass would be honored with a magnificent funeral. The feast established at Verona passed into other countries, and was especially celebrated in France. In the mass was sung:
Orientis partibus
Adventabit asinus,
Pulcher et fortissimus.