The Golden Ass

by Peter Singer

  “I believe that outlaws who think straight should never let anything get in the way of profit, not even revenge, which has ruined so many of us. Now, if you wastefully destroy that girl in the ass, you’ll be indulging your anger without any return. Instead, I recommend we take her to some city or other and sell her. Such a young thing will fetch no mean price! I already have in mind several pimps of long acquaintance; one of them could sell that girl for a lot of gold, I bet, befitting her noble birth, and put her in a brothel where she can’t run away again. And, when she’s slaving away in a whorehouse, no question you’ll be getting your revenge. There. I’ve given you my honest and heartfelt advice, but you are the masters of your own affairs and decisions.”

  Thus did that fiscal conservative and preeminent savior of maiden and ass advance our cause! Meanwhile, the rest of them tortured my heart—no, my pitiful soul—with their long deliberations, but finally they consented willingly to the new recruit’s position and instantly released the girl from her chains. As for her, as soon as she saw the young man and heard about the pimp and the whorehouse, she burst into joyous laughter—justifying me in condemning her whole sex. Here was a girl who had feigned a desire for a chaste marriage to her young fiancé, suddenly savoring the thought of a sordid, stinking whorehouse! At that juncture, the whole race of women and their morals were being subjected to the judgment of an ass!

  Then the young man started speaking again: “In that case, why don’t we proceed with our prayers to Mars the Comrade and with selling the girl and tracking down new associates. But wait—I see that we don’t have any livestock for sacrifice or wine to drink in sufficient, let alone copious, amounts. So pick out ten companions for me, enough so that I can attack the neighboring village and provide you with a sumptuous meal.” With that, he set out, while the others got a huge fire going and set up an altar of green turf to the god Mars.

  The contingent returned shortly, bringing wineskins and driving along a whole herd of livestock. They picked out a large, ancient, shaggy he-goat that they sacrificed to their “helper and comrade,” Mars, and instantly prepared a lavish dinner. Then the host said, “I hope you’ll regard me as your tireless chief, not only of expeditions and pillaging, but also of pleasures.” Saying which, he managed everything with ease and efficiency: swept up, set up, cooked, stuffed sausages, served skillfully. Above all, he flooded each of them with huge and bottomless goblets of wine. Meanwhile, under the guise of fetching what he needed, he constantly walked by the girl and cheerfully offered her stealthily stolen tidbits and pre-sipped drinks. She—that girl!—greedily accepted all of it and repeatedly, when he wanted to kiss her, showed her desire with eager kisses. I didn’t like this at all. “Hey girl, virgin girl, have you forgotten your wedding and that lover you loved? Can you really prefer this stranger, this bloody assassin, to that man your parents just joined to you in marriage? Doesn’t your conscience prick you, and are you really happy to be stomping on that love while playing the whore amidst all these spears and swords? And what if the other robbers get wind of this? At this rate, you’ll be back to running away on the ass and leading me to destruction. The truth is, you’re toying with someone else’s hide!”

  I was indignantly arguing this case to myself, slanderer that I was, when I realized through certain phrases of theirs—vague but not opaque to a clever ass—that this was not the famous Haemus the Bandit, but Tlepolemus, the girl’s betrothed. For as their conversation proceeded, he talked more loudly, ignoring my presence. “Cheer up, my dearest Charite,” he said, “soon all these enemies of yours will be your captives.” Then, with even greater insistence, he continued to force wine on them, now undiluted with water and slightly warmed. They were helpless, intoxicated, drunk, soused, while he remained sober. By Hercules, I somewhat suspected he’d slipped some sort of sleeping potion into those wine jugs. All of them, every last one, were lying there buried in wine, each one as good as dead. Then he bound them with the tightest possible shackles; they were under his control now. He put the girl on my back and headed for his homeland.

  As we approached, the whole city poured out for this blessed sight. Parents, kin, neighbors, clients, dependents, and slaves all came running out, their faces alight, overflowing with joy. You could see a procession of every sex and every age and, I swear, a new and remarkable spectacle: a virgin celebrating her Triumph on an ass. Last but not least, there I was, exuberant, wanting to hold up my manly share of the festivity. And just so that I wouldn’t be on the sidelines as if I had nothing to do with the business at hand, I stretched out my ears, flared my nostrils, and hee-hawed with all my might. In fact, I let out a noise like a thunderclap!

  Her parents enveloped and comforted her in her bedchamber while Tlepolemus led me back to the scene with a great crowd of townspeople and pack animals. This pleased me, as I was curious and wanted to turn spectator of the robbers’ capture. We found them still immobilized, more by wine than by shackles. So after all the robbers’ loot was excavated and put on display, we were loaded up with gold, silver, and all the rest. As for the robbers, some of them were rolled over toward the ravines nearby, still tied up, and hurled down. Others were just left there, butchered by their own swords. Then we came back to the city happy and rejoicing at such a satisfying revenge; they sent the confiscated riches to the public treasury and legally wed the girl we’d recovered to Tlepolemus.

  From that time on, she (now married) called me her savior and tended to me lavishly. On her very wedding day, she made sure my trough was replenished with barley and made the stable boys set out hay enough to satisfy a Bactrian camel. But I kept cursing Fotis, and she deserved it, for turning me into an ass and not a dog, when I saw those dogs stuffed and fattened with leftovers and scavenged bits from the wedding feast!

  After just one night of training in the rites of Venus, the newlywed girl couldn’t stop expressing to her parents and husband her deep gratitude to me. She made them promise they would grant me the very highest honors, so they called in all their most serious friends to advise them how best to reward me. One man’s recommendation was to keep me closed up at home and at leisure and fatten me up with choice barley, beans, and alfalfa. But another, with an eye to my freedom, won out, proposing that I should run free in the open fields, frisking among the herds of horses, supplying my masters with many little mules as I mounted the mares with my noble seed!

  Therefore, they called in the slave in charge of the horse stables and, after a long preamble, handed me over to be led to the fields. I ran on ahead, jubilant and lighthearted, confident that I was on the brink of shedding all my burdens! Now that I was free and spring was coming, I was sure to find roses somewhere in the blooming meadows! And then I had another thought: if they were granting me this many thanks and honors as an ass, think how much more they would reward me when I recovered my human form!

  But when that herdsman had led me far from town, there was no luxurious living and not even freedom awaiting me. For his evil, greedy wife immediately yoked me to a mill for grinding flour, and kept me in line with a knotted cudgel. She was aiming to supply bread for herself and her family—out of my hide! It wasn’t enough for her to exhaust me on her own food; she also sold my services, walking endless circles in the mill, to her neighbors for grinding their grain. On top of that, she didn’t even provide poor me with the food rationed to me in return for all this hard labor! She would sell my barley, hulled and crushed in the same mill by my own perambulations, to the farmers nearby. For me, after I’d carefully attended to this backbreaking machine all day long, she set out chaff late in the evening, unsifted, filthy and bumpy with a lot of pebbles.

  I was already crushed by these hardships when cruel Fortune subjected me to new trials. Clearly she wanted to make me triumph over my troubles, “doing daring deeds, both at home and abroad,” as they say. A bit tardily, that gracious herdsman let me co-graze with the herd of horses, as his master had ordered. I was a free ass at last, happily doing a little ritual
dance, tripping with a light step, as I picked out the most serviceable mares to be my concubines! But even this uplifting hope devolved into a life-threatening disaster, for the stallions, well fed and fattened up for the regular breeding season, got wind of me. Terrifying to begin with, and anyway stronger than any ass, they saw me as a threat and were on guard against the interbreeding that would debase their line. With no respect for the contractual agreement of hospitality under Jove, the stallions attacked me as their rival, with extreme hatred and fury. The first one raised his vast chest to the sky, his head high, his crest aloft, as he boxed with his forehooves; another turned his back, thick with fleshy muscles, and skirmished with kicks of his hind legs; a third threatened me with nasty whinnying, set back his ears, bared his white ax-like teeth, and bit me all over.

  It was like what I read about in the story of that Thracian king who used to offer his unfortunate guests to his wild horses to tear up and devour. As I see it now, that superpowerful tyrant was so miserly with his barley that he quieted the hunger of his voracious pack animals with generous portions of human flesh.

  Just like those poor guests, I was being torn apart by a variety of horse attacks, and I actually missed my circuits in the mill. But then Fortune, never satiated with my excruciating tortures, devised yet another plague! I was delegated with carrying wood down from the mountain, and a slave boy was appointed as my supervisor—the worst boy, worse than anyone! It wasn’t just that the steep peaks of the tall mountain tired me out, or that I was grinding down my hooves by stubbing them on stony spikes, but that the boy endlessly hewed at me with nonstop strikes of his clubs, so that the pain of his blows settled into my very marrow. And since he was always inflicting his strikes on my right hip, and hitting the same place until my hide was pulverized, he made this wound into a very wide opening—a pit, rather, or even a window—but he never stopped pounding that wound, dripping with blood, over and over and over again. On top of that, he loaded me down with such a weight of logs that you’d think it was a bundle made for an elephant, not an ass! And this boy, whenever a bundle was leaning to one side, surely he could have subtracted some sticks from the heavier, tottering side and lightened the pressure a little to give me some relief. Or at least he could have balanced the weight by transferring something to the other side. What did he do? He remedied the differential in weight by adding stones on top.

  After all I’d been through, that boy still wasn’t satisfied with the unreasonable weight of my load. So whenever we were crossing the stream that flowed by the side of the road, he sprang up and sat on my rear parts to protect his country boots from the water. (To be honest, his scrawniness didn’t add much extra weight to the enormity of the load.) If I happened to slip and collapse in the slimy mud at the slick edge of the riverbank because I couldn’t bear the weight, he didn’t offer me any help in my exhaustion. That excellent ass-driver should have extended a hand, raised me up by my halter, hoisted me by my tail, or certainly removed part of that massive burden at least until I could get back up. Instead, he pounded me all over with the largest imaginable rod, starting with my head—my ears, to be exact—until it was these blows, rather than kindly encouragement, that roused me to my feet. This same boy also thought up this scourge: he tied up a bouquet of the sharpest, most venomous, stinging thorns and fastened it to my tail as a suspended torture device. When I walked, it was set in motion ever faster and dug into me with deadly barbs!

  That meant I was working with a two-pronged evil: when I tore off at a run to avoid his vicious attacks, I was struck harder by the force of those thorns, but if I stopped for a moment to spare myself the pain, I was pushed back on course with his blows. This utterly depraved boy didn’t seem to think about anything except how he could destroy me, and he often swore and threatened to do just that. And then there was an incident that drove this despicable, malicious boy to even lower tactics; one day, he exhausted my patience with his supreme insolence, so I let loose my powerful hooves against him. In retaliation, he devised this criminal plan: he loaded me up with a good-sized bundle of hemp tied on tightly with ropes, and we set out. When we came to the next village, he stole a live coal and placed it right in the heart of the load. And so, gathering heat and fed by the light, dry kindling, the fire surged into flames and enveloped my whole body in a lethal inferno. This was an inescapable and final catastrophe. I didn’t see how I could take comfort in any avenue toward safety, and there was no time to think or devise a plan; a conflagration like this admits no delay.

  But Fortune shone a little favorably on me at this risky juncture. Maybe she was reserving me for future dangers, but at least for now she saved me from immediate and certain death. As luck would have it, I spied nearby a tank of muddy water replenished by yesterday’s rain, and I plunged my whole self into it with a blind leap.

  When the flames were totally extinguished, I emerged relieved of the weight and delivered from death. But that meanest, thoughtless boy turned even this most depraved act of his against me, insisting to all the herdsmen that I had purposely slipped while passing the neighbor’s hearth fires and voluntarily caught fire! Then he added with a chuckle, “How long, citizens, will we continue to uselessly feed this ass-on-fire?”

  A few days later, he went after me with even worse lies; after selling the wood I was carrying at a nearby cottage, he was leading me along, unencumbered, when he loudly declared that he’d had it with my vile behavior and was henceforth refusing to perform this tiresome duty. He concocted accusations like this:

  “See him? This lazy, slowest ever, ass of an ass? On top of all his other misconduct, now he’s got me anxious with his new brand of risky behavior. Whenever he sees someone in the street, be it an attractive woman or a cute youngish girl or a pretty boy, he shakes his load right off—sometimes even throws off the pack saddle—rushes at them madly, and assaults them. A lover like that—assaults humans! Then, when they’re lying helpless on the ground, he breathes heavily over them and tries to engage in forbidden and unrecognizable forms of lust—animalistic pleasures. He pushes them into sex against Venus’s wishes. I mean, he even has the look of kissing them when he batters and bites them with his disgusting mouth! This is going to bring us nonstop fights and complaints, probably even lawsuits. Just now, when he saw a classy young lady, he threw down and scattered the wood he was carrying and propelled himself at her in a frenzy. And this amazing lover-boy had the woman flat on the filthy ground and tried to mount her right there in front of everyone. If passersby hadn’t come to the woman’s aid as she shouted to them, weeping and screaming, and if she hadn’t been snatched from underneath his hooves and set free, that poor woman would have been trampled and torn apart. She would have suffered a torturous end, and we would have been handed a death sentence for sure.”

  By adding yet more stories to lies like these—which challenged my ability to maintain a modest silence—he cruelly goaded on the angry herdsmen to destroy me. After a while, one of them said, “Then why don’t we give this husband-to-all, this communal adulterer, an end worthy of his monstrous weddings and sacrifice him on the altar?” Then, to the boy: “Hey you, boy, slaughter him right away and toss his guts to our dogs, but save all the rest of the meat for the field hands’ supper. This’ll work because we’ll harden up the hide with a sprinkling of ash and bring it to our masters and we can easily lie about his death from a wolf.” Without delay, that criminal boy, my accuser and the executor of the death sentence decreed by the herdsmen, joyfully mocked my troubles as he recalled that kick—which I so regretted had been ineffectual—and at once started to sharpen his sword on a whetstone.

  But then someone from that crowd of country folk said, “It wouldn’t be right to kill such a beautiful ass like that and lose the work and services we need because of this charge of disorderly conduct and sexual friskiness. Instead, we could just cut off his genitals so he couldn’t get it up for sex, and free you from the risks you’re worried about. Besides, it’ll make him much plumper
and fatter. I’ve known a lot of, not just lazy asses, but even the wildest horses that were struggling with an oversized libido and, on account of that, were savage and crazy, but when they were de-testicled, they turned placid and peaceful, and they’re still quite useful for carrying loads and providing other services. So—if I’m not preaching to the unpersuaded, I could come back later—I’m just on my way to the market nearby—after I get the necessary instruments from home. I can return to you right away, separate his thighs, unman this wild and uncouth lover, and make him gentler than any gelded ram.”

  With this speech, I was grabbed from the very hands of Death only to be preserved for the worst penalty of all. I was in mourning, and I wept to think that my complete self would perish along with that hindmost part of me. So I was looking for a way to annihilate myself—maybe lengthy fasting or a quick leap off a cliff, dying all the same, but dying whole. While I was hesitating over the manner of my death, that boy, my destroyer, led me in the morning up the mountain along the usual route. He had tied me to the lower limb of a gigantic oak and himself went off the path a little and was chopping wood with an ax to carry back home. And then, from a cave right next to me, rearing its tremendous head high, creeps a death-dealing bear. As soon as I see it, shaking and terrified by this sudden apparition, I swing the entire weight of my body onto my back haunches, arch my neck and rear high in the air, break the rope holding me, and right away give myself over to precipitate flight. I rapidly slid down the steep mountain slope, stretching forward not only my feet, but my whole frame, and made my way into the fields lying below, fleeing with all my force that big bear and, worse than the bear, that boy.