The Golden Ass

by Peter Singer

  So, with a brisk pull, I snapped the rope that had bound me and tore off at a four-footed gallop, but I couldn’t escape the eagle eyes of that tricky old woman. When she saw me untied, she grabbed the rope and tried to call me back and rein me in—surpassing her sex and age in daring. For my part, I was mindful of the robbers’ deadly plan and wasn’t moved by any sense of reverence for the aged; rather, I struck her with the hooves of my back feet and dashed her right to the ground. Yet she, while lying prostrate on the ground, still stubbornly held onto that rope, so that, for a while, she was trailing me as I dragged her along. Then she began to scream loudly and beg for help from some stronger hand, but she raised this pointless commotion in vain, since no one was around except that captive maiden, who heard the summons and came running out. By Hercules, she saw a spectacle to remember: a little old lady being dragged by an ass. Then that maiden gathered some manly resolve and dared a beautiful deed: she extracted the rope from the old woman’s hands, called me back from my flight with calm coaxing, quickly climbed on my back, and goaded me back on track.

  So it was that, from my own desire to flee, my eagerness to free the girl, and the frequent persuasion of her blows, I was beating the earth at a horse’s speed with all four feet, clip-clop clip-clop. I tried to whinny in answer to the maiden’s sweet words, and I often twisted my neck around under the guise of scratching my back so I could kiss the girl’s pretty feet.

  Then she sighed deeply and turned an anxious face to the heavens to pray:

  “You, gods, come to my aid at last, in my extreme peril, and you, harsh Fortune, cease your raging; these miserable torments should be offerings enough for you. And you, defender of my liberty and my safety, if you carry me home unharmed and return me to my parents and my handsome betrothed, what thanks will I offer, what honors will I proffer, what copious fodder! First of all, I’m going to comb that mane of yours properly and decorate it with the necklaces of my girlhood; I’ll curl your forelocks—but comb and part them prettily first; and your tail—you haven’t had a bath, so the hairs are all stuck together and dreadful. I’ll clean it all up carefully and comb it. And after I spangle you with lots of golden studs so you sparkle like the stars in the sky, you will march in triumph to the people’s joyous cheers while I carry nuts for you and delicacies in the pockets of my silk dress. You, my savior, I will stuff full of food every day!

  “What’s more, in the midst of choice foods, deep rest, and a lifetime of happiness, you will also enjoy glorious honor, for I will record in perpetuity the memory of my good fortune and the intervention of divine providence. I will ritually dedicate an image of our flight, painted on a wood panel, in the atrium of my house. People will see it and talk about it, and this simple story will be immortalized by the pens of learned writers: ‘A princess fleeing captivity on the back of an ass.’ You will be added to the ancient tales of miraculous animals, and because of the truth of your tale, we will now believe that Phrixus crossed the sea on a ram, Arion steered a dolphin, and Europa lay down on a bull. Because, if Jupiter mooed in the shape of a bull, some human face or divine shape might be hidden in my donkey.”

  While the girl went on like this, sighing often amid her prayers, we came to a fork in the road, where she pulled on the reins and tried very hard to steer me to the right, presumably because this road led to her parents. But I knew that the robbers had gone that way for the rest of the loot, so I resisted vigorously and silently complained in my mind like this: “What are you doing, unlucky girl? What are you doing? Why are you hurrying to Hades? Why are you fighting against my feet? You aren’t just taking yourself to perdition, but me, too!” We were disputing in this way, like neighbors in a lawsuit over property lines or rather a legal case about road division, when the robbers, loaded with their plunder, caught us right out in the open. In the light of the full moon, they recognized us from far away and greeted us with mean laughter.

  One of them called out, “Where are you headed so fast at this late hour? Aren’t you afraid of the ghosts and demons in the dead of night? And you, dutiful girl, are you hurrying to visit your parents? We can give you protection on your lonely way and show you a quick route to your family.” He followed up his words with action, grabbing the rope and twisting me around; nor did he spare me the usual beatings with the knotted staff in his hand. Then, as I was returning to imminent death much against my will, I remembered my sore hoof, bent my head down, and started to limp. At that, the robber who was pulling me said, “Look at that! Now you’re tottering and staggering again! Those rotten feet of yours can run away, but they can’t walk. Just now you were outrunning winged Pegasus!”

  While my kindly companion was shaking his staff and taunting me, we came to the outer enclosure of their dwelling and there, hanging from a noose on a branch of a tall cypress, was the old woman. They drew her down and threw her off a cliff at once, with the noose she’d tied still around her neck. They quickly chained the girl up at a distance and with animalistic eagerness attacked the dinner the old woman had prepared with posthumous care.

  So, while they massacred the dinner with their ravenous appetites, they began to deliberate about how to punish us in revenge. Since it was a raucous crowd, there were various opinions: the first thought the girl should be burned alive, the second argued persuasively that she should be thrown to the beasts in the arena, the third urged that she be fastened to a gibbet, and the fourth recommended that she should be tortured to death. In any case, everyone voted for capital punishment. Then, when the tumult died down, one of them rose and spoke calmly: “It is not consistent with the tenets of our profession or the mildness of each of us, nor even with my sense of restraint, to allow you all to rage beyond the norm or out of proportion with the offense. Let’s not summon up beasts and crosses and fires and torture, and especially not the hurry and darkness of a quick death. If you listen to my advice, you will give the girl her life, but the one she deserves. And in particular, let me remind you what you decided long ago about this ass—lazy and a supreme glutton and a liar as well, faking a disability while aiding and abetting the girl’s flight. I move we kill him tomorrow and hollow out his innards. Then we sew this girl that he chose over us into the middle of his belly, naked, so that only her head sticks out and he surrounds the rest of her body in a bestial embrace. Then we expose this stuffed and fattened ass on a craggy rock and leave him to the blazing heat of the sun.

  “That way, both of them will suffer all those things you so aptly suggest. The ass gets a death he has long deserved. She gets bitten by beasts when the worms tear her limbs. Then she gets the burning by fire, when the sun inflames his stomach with its excessive heat. After that she has the torment of the gibbet when dogs and vultures drag out her internal organs. As for tortures, just count them: while alive, she will inhabit the belly of an animal; her nostrils will chafe at the awful stench; she will waste away with deadly hunger from prolonged fasting, and with her hands tied, she won’t even be able to hasten her own death.”

  After his speech, the robbers didn’t just vote with their feet, but with their whole souls. And what was I to do as I listened with my large ears except mourn the corpse I would be tomorrow?

  AS SOON AS THE DAY HAD BLEACHED OUT AND banished the dark, and the bright chariot of the sun was illuminating the world, another member of the robber gang arrived—as I could tell from the way they greeted each other. He sat down at the front entrance of the cave totally winded, caught his breath, and made the following speech to his comrades: “We can rest easy and dismiss our worries regarding our recent break-in at the house of Milo of Hypata. After you guys had hauled off the loot with bravery and fortitude and returned to our camp, I mingled in the crowds of citizens and pretended to be sad and indignant. As agreed, I was figuring I could report back to you fully on the investigation: what kind of plan they were devising, and whether, and to what extent, they had decided to track down the culprits. By universal consensus, reached not by dubious evidence but by sound rea
soning, someone named Lucius is being charged as the clear perpetrator of the crime. A few days before, he had passed himself off to Milo with a fictitious letter of recommendation, masquerading as an honest man. He won his host over completely, was even received as a houseguest and treated as a close friend. After staying there a few days, he wormed his way into the confidence of Milo’s slave girl by pretending to be in love with her, and had painstakingly examined the locks on the doors and carefully investigated the parts of the house where the whole family fortune was stored.

  “This was no small evidence of guilt, seeing as how the aforementioned had fled that same night at the very moment of the crime and couldn’t be found anywhere from that point on. The reason being, he’d brought along that white horse of his to serve as his getaway so that he could quickly elude his pursuers and hide himself as far away as he could. His slave, who was discovered in that same domicile, should clearly be a source of evidence for the crimes and intentions of his master, and was taken into public custody by the magistrates’ orders. The next day, he was subjected to countless torments and tortured almost to death, but he didn’t confess to any of this. Nonetheless, a large deputation was sent to this Lucius’s homeland to search out the accused and make him pay for his crime.”

  While the robber was speaking, I inwardly compared my previous fortune as that charmed man, Lucius, and my present troubles as an unfortunate ass, and I groaned from the depths of my being. It came to me that it was not for nothing that the men of old, fonts of ancient wisdom, had visualized and described Fortune as blind and eyeless. For she always confers her riches on bad and unworthy people and never favors any mortal on the basis of any rational judgment. Instead, she dwells with those whom she most should flee, and would, if only she could see them. What’s worse, she assigns us random reputations, or rather contrary ones, so that the bad man revels in the fame of a good man, and the most innocent is punished with the reputation of the guilty.

  As for me, Fortune’s savage attack had reduced me to a beast and a quadruped of the lowest sort, whose lot would rightly seem lamentable and pitiable even to the most unsympathetic. And now I was being arraigned for the crime of robbing my dearest host! That’s a crime you should call “parricide,” not just larceny. And yet, I couldn’t defend myself even with a single word! I wanted to avoid the appearance of a guilty conscience and didn’t want to seem to assent silently to such a serious criminal charge, so I did what I could, since I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to say, “No, I didn’t,” and I yelled the first word once and again extremely loudly, but I couldn’t pronounce the rest at all. I was stuck on the first word and kept bellowing, “No, No,” even though I was vibrating my pendulous lips and rounding them as much as I could. In the end, what greater complaint can I lodge against the perversity of Fortune than that she wasn’t ashamed to make me a fellow slave and partner of my servant and transporter, my horse?

  While these thoughts were running through my mind, that other, more serious concern came back to me, and I recalled that the robbers had decreed I was to be sacrificed to the girl’s ghost, so to speak. I kept looking at my belly and already felt pregnant with the poor girl. At that point, the one who had reported the false information about me brought out a thousand gold pieces that he had concealed by sewing them into his hem. He said he had lifted them from various travelers and was bringing them to the communal coffers, as an honest man should. He also began to inquire anxiously about his comrades’ health. When he learned that a number of them—in fact, all the bravest—had met various, but not inglorious, ends, he persuaded us to give our travels a cease-fire and call a truce on all our battles, while focusing instead on seeking out additional recruits.

  By apprenticing fresh young men, this cohort devoted to Mars would be restored to its original numbers. For those unwilling to join could be compelled by fear, while the willing ones would be drawn by the rewards. Not a few would prefer to renounce their lives of humble servitude and follow this profession, achieving an almost despotic power. For his part, he had already approached a man tall in stature, young in years, immense in body, and quick with his hands. He had urged and finally persuaded him to turn his hands, dulled by long inactivity, to something more worthy, and to enjoy, while he could, the benefits of good health; he shouldn’t hold out a perfectly strong hand to beg for spare change, but should put it to work scooping up gold.

  They agreed unanimously, and decreed that they should enroll the one who was already effectively approved and seek out others to boost their numbers. Then the robber went off and soon came back with a gigantic young man, as promised. I don’t think there was anyone comparable in the band, for, apart from the bulk of his body, he stood a head taller than all the others, yet fuzz was just beginning to grow on his cheeks. He was half clothed in ill-fitting, stitched-together patchwork, from which his chest and abdomen with their strong muscular definition were rippling forth.

  “Howdy, vassals of the greatest god Mars,” he said as he entered, “and now my trusted comrades-in-arms. Willingly accept a willing man, full of courage and energy, who would rather take wounds in his body than gold in his hand. Stronger than death, which others fear. Don’t think me needy or humble, and don’t judge my merits by these rags. In fact, I was the leader of the strongest robber band around, and I utterly laid waste to all of Macedonia. I am the famous outlaw Haemus the Thracian, whose name makes all the provinces tremble, scion of my father, Theron, an equally renowned bandit. I was reared on human blood, brought up among the very infantry of our gang, the heir and rival of my father’s greatness.

  “But I lost that whole original host of brave comrades in the briefest space of time when I unfortunately launched an attack on an Imperial official as he was passing by. He had held the office of procurator, but had been dislodged when his luck changed … Sorry, I’m taking things out of order. There was a man in the Emperor’s circle, famous and highly visible for the many services he performed, and also well regarded by the Emperor himself. Then raging jealousy intervened; he was set up by certain cunning men and sent into exile. But his wife, Plotina: she was a woman of exceptional loyalty and remarkable chastity, who had laid the foundation of her husband’s family with ten tours of duty in childbirth. She spurned and despised the softness of urban luxury and joined her husband as companion of his exile and partner of misfortune. She cut her hair and transformed her appearance to a man’s, but in her belt were her most valuable necklaces and gold coins. She bravely shared in every danger amid squadrons of military guards and naked swords, and kept a careful lookout for her husband’s safety, all the while bearing constant suffering with a masculine attitude. At last, after enduring many hardships on the road and terrors on the sea, she was heading for Zacynthos, which Fate had decreed was to be her temporary home.

  “She had landed at the shore of Actium, where we were lurking at the time, after slipping down from Macedonia. When she got there, since it was late at night, they all rested at a little inn near the shore to avoid the rough waves at sea. We attacked and took everything. We got out of there, but not without serious danger, for as soon as that lady noticed the first creak of the door, she ran into the sleeping quarters and roused everyone with excited shouting, calling the soldiers and servants by name, and summoning help from the whole neighborhood as well. But because of the general cowardice—everyone hid, fearing only for themselves—in the end, we managed to get away safely.

  “Right away, though, that most virtuous woman—no, I have to give her credit—that woman of incomparable loyalty, well liked because of her many good qualities, made entreaties to the divine Emperor and quickly engineered her husband’s return with full revenge for our attack. In short, the Emperor did not want the guild of Haemus the Bandit to exist and it immediately ceased. Such is the power of a mere nod from the great ruler. When the whole unit had been tracked down by a military detachment and was finished off and cut to pieces, I stole away alone, snatching myself from the jaws of Orcus in this
way:

  “I put on a flowery woman’s dress that flowed down in loose folds, covered my head with a woven headdress, and put on those thin white shoes that women wear. And so, surrounded and hidden among the weaker sex, and riding on an ass carrying sheaves of barley, I crossed right through the middle of enemy lines. Since they thought I was a female ass-driver, they gave me free access, especially since at the time my cheeks were beardless and shone with the smoothness of youth.

  “But even then I didn’t abandon my ancestral glory or my own courage, even though I was somewhat fearful amid the murderous weapons of Mars. I was protected by my deceitful disguise, so I assailed various country houses and forts and scraped together a little travel money.” At that, he quickly unfastened his rags and poured out two thousand gold pieces, saying, “There. I freely offer you this disbursement, or rather dowry, and offer myself to your company as your most trustworthy leader. I hope you won’t refuse. In a short space of time, I will turn this stone house of yours into gold.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, the robbers unanimously cast their votes to put him in command, and produced quite an elegant garment to replace his money-laden rags. Transformed like this, he kissed each of them, took a seat at the head of the table, and ritually initiated his rule with a dinner and large cups of wine. Then, through conversation back and forth, he learned about the maiden’s escape attempt, my part as her conveyor, and the monstrous death planned for the two of us. He asked where she was and they led him there. When he saw her shackled with chains, he walked away, wrinkling his nose in disapproval. “I’m not so insensitive or rash that I would obstruct your resolution,” he said, “but it would weigh on my conscience if I concealed my opinion. But first grant me your trust, since I have your interests at heart, and anyway, you can always return to the ass-scheme if my view is not to your liking.