[Footnote NF.21: _Injury to this field_)--Ver. 4. The Hare is more an enemy to the flowers in gardens than to the fields. It was probably for this reason that the Romans sacrificed this animal to the Goddess Flora.] FABLE XXVIII. THE YOUNG MAN AND THE COURTESAN. _Many things are pleasing which still are not to our advantage._ While a perfidious Courtesan was fawning upon a Youth, and he, though wronged {by her} many a time and oft, still showed himself indulgent to the Woman, the faithless {Creature thus addressed him}: “Though many contend {for me} with {their} gifts, still do I esteem you the most.” The Youth, recollecting how many times he had been deceived, replied: “Gladly, my love, do I hear these words; not because you are constant, but because you administer to my pleasures.” FABLE XXIX. THE BEAVER. _Many would escape, if for the sake of safety they would disregard their comforts._ The Beaver (to which the talkative Greeks have given the name of Castor, thus bestowing upon an animal the name of a God[22]--they who boast of the abundance of their epithets) when can no longer escape the dogs, is said to bite off his testicles, because he is aware that it is for them he is sought; a thing which I would not deny being done through an instinct granted by the Gods; for as soon as the Huntsman has found the drug, he ceases his pursuit, and calls off the dogs. If men could manage, so as to be ready to part with what they own, in order to live in safety for the future, there would be no one to devise stratagems to the detriment of the naked body. [Footnote NF.22: _Name of a God_)--Ver. 3. This pun upon the resemblance of “Castor,” the name of the demigod, to “Castor,” “a beaver,” seems to be a puerile pun; and the remark upon the limited “copia verborum” of the Greeks, seems more likely to proceed from the Archbishop of Sipontum than from Phædrus, who was evidently proud of his Grecian origin.] FABLE XXX. THE BUTTERFLY AND THE WASP. _Not past but present Fortune must be regarded._ A Butterfly[23] seeing a Wasp flying by: “Oh, sad is our lot,” said she, “derived from the depths of hell, from the recesses of which we have received our existence. I, eloquent in peace, brave in battle, most skilled in every art, whatever I once was, behold, light and rotten, and mere ashes do I fly.[24] You, who were a Mule[25] with panniers, hurt whomsoever you choose, by fixing your sting in him.” The Wasp, too, uttered these words, well suited to her disposition: “Consider not what we were, but what we now are.”