Category Archives: GREECE
286.The She-Goats and Their Beards
THE SHE-GOATS having obtained a beard by request to Jove, the he-Goats were sorely displeased and made complaint that the females equalled them in dignity.
“Allow them,” said Jove, “to enjoy an empty honour and to assume the badge of your nobler sex, so long as they are not your equals in strength or courage.”
❖ It matters if those who are inferior to us in merit get like us in outside appearances, but hardly enough.
285.The Serpent and the Eagle
A SERPENT and an eagle were struggling with each other in deadly conflict. The serpent had the advantage, and was about to strangle the bird. A countryman saw them, and running up, loosed the coil of the serpent and let the eagle go free. The serpent, irritated at the escape of his prey, injected his poison into the drinking horn of the countryman. The rustic, ignorant of his danger, was about to drink, when the eagle struck his hand with his wing, and, seizing the drinking horn in his talons, carried it aloft.
❖ Excellent help may be difficult to appreciate in a squeeze that is still unrecognised.
284.The Seller of Images
A CERTAIN MAN made a wooden image of Mercury and offered it for sale. When no one appeared willing to buy it, in order to attract buyers, he cried out that he had the statue to sell of a benefactor who bestowed wealth and helped to heap up riches. One of the bystanders said to him,
“My good fellow, why do you sell him, being such a one as you describe, when you may yourself enjoy the good things he has to give?”
“Why,” he replied,
“I am in need of immediate help, and he is wont to give his good gifts very slowly.”
❖ Rationalisations may become costly as time goes by.
283.The Seaside Travellers
SOME TRAVELERS, journeying along the seashore, climbed to the summit of a tall cliff, and looking over the sea, saw in the distance what they thought was a large ship. They waited in the hope of seeing it enter the harbour, but as the object on which they looked was driven nearer to shore by the wind, they found that it could at the most be a small boat, and not a ship. When however it reached the beach, they discovered that it was only a large faggot of sticks, and one of them said to his companions, “We have waited for no purpose, for after all there is nothing to see but a load of wood.”
❖ Our mere anticipations of life should not run wild and outrun its realities.
