Muli gravati sarcinis ibant duo; Unus ferebat fiscos cum pecuniâ, Alter tumentes multo saccos hordeo. Ille, onere dives, celsâ cervice eminet, Clarumque collo jactat tintinnabulum; Comes quieto sequitur et placido gradu. Subito latrones ex insidiis advolant, Interque cædem ferro mulum sauciant, Diripiunt nummos, negligunt vile hordeum. Spoliatus igitur cum casus fleret suos, Equidem, inquit alter, me contemptum gaudeo, Nam nihil amisi nec sum læsus vulnere. Hoc argumento tuta est hominum tenuitas; Magnæ periclo sunt opes obnoxiæ.[1018] “Two mules, laden with heavy burdens, were journeying together: one carried bags of money; the other, sacks filled with barley. The former, proud of his rich load, carried his head high, and made the bell on his neck sound merrily; his companion followed with quiet and gentle paces. On a sudden, some thieves rush from an ambuscade, wound the treasure-mule, strip him of his money-bags, but leave untouched the worthless barley. When, therefore, the sufferer bewailed his sad case—‘For my part,’ replied his companion, ‘I rejoice that I was treated with contempt; for I have no wounds, and have lost nothing.’ The subject of this fable proves that poverty is safe, whilst great wealth is exposed to peril.” The fable of the Man and the Ass teaches a salutary lesson to another class of wealthy men, namely, those favourites of the emperor and his creatures, who owed their wealth to plunder and confiscation. Every day’s experience proved that those who battened on the spoils of the oppressed one day, became themselves the victims of the same tyrannical system the next. Like that of the prime minister, Sejanus himself, the sun of their prosperity was destined to set, and their ill-gotten spoil to enrich others as unworthy as themselves. Those fortunes were indeed built upon a rotten foundation, which the same system had power to raise up and to overthrow:— Quidam immolasset verrem quum sancto Herculi, Cui pro salute votum debebat sua, Asello jussit reliquias poni hordei. Quas aspernatus ille sic locutus est: Tuum libenter prorsus appeterem cibum Nisi, qui nutritus illo est, jugulatus foret. * * * * * Majorem turbam punitorum reperies; Paucis temeritas est bono, multis malo.[1019] “A man who had sacrificed a boar to Hercules, which he had vowed as a thank-offering for his recovery from sickness, ordered the remains of the barley to be given to his ass. The ass rejected it with scorn, and said, ‘I would gladly eat of the food you give me, had not he who was fattened on it had his throat cut.’