The Old Man and the Ass began as a fable with a political theme. Appearing among

Aesop's Fables Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to ...

, it is numbered 476 in the

Perry Index The Perry Index is a widely used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC. The index was created by Ben Edwin Perry, a professor of classics at the Un ...

Variations and interpretations

The fable as recorded by Phaedrus concerns an old man who tells his ass to fly with him on the approach of an army. The ass asks if they are liable to double his load and on being assured not, replies that, since his lot is to be a beast of burden, he is indifferent who is his owner. Phaedrus comments on the story that "When there is a change in government, nothing changes for the poor folk except their master's name." Much the same conclusion is drawn in

Hieronymus Osius Hieronymus Osius was a German Neo-Latin poet and academic about whom there are few biographical details. He was born about 1530 in Schlotheim and murdered in 1575 in Graz. After studying first at the university of Erfurt, he gained his master's ...

's Neo-Latin poem, ''Asinus et vitulus'' (the ass and the herdboy). The story later appeared in

La Fontaine's Fables Jean de La Fontaine collected fables from a wide variety of sources, both Western and Eastern, and adapted them into French free verse. They were issued under the general title of Fables in several volumes from 1668 to 1694 and are considered cla ...

as ''Le vieillard et l'âne'' (VI.8). Here the ass has been turned into a meadow and prefers to continue grazing rather than flee. Its conclusion is that, whoever is owner, "Our master is our enemy" (''Notre ennemi, c’est notre maître''). This was translated into English by Charles Dennis in his ''Select Fables'' (1754) and later by John Matthews, where he likened the situation to partitioned Poland.

Laurentius Abstemius Laurentius Abstemius (c. 1440–1508) was an Italian writer and professor of philology, born at Macerata in Ancona. His learned name plays on his family name of Bevilaqua (Drinkwater), and he was also known by the Italian name Lorenzo Astemio. A ...

wrote a variant fable that appeared in his ''Hecatomythium'' (1490).Fable 8
/ref> There it is a calf and an ass who discuss what to do in face of an advancing army. The calf is advised to run away since its life would be at stake, but in the ass' case "servants need not fear a change in masters, so long as they are no worse than the previous one". This seems to reference as well the changes for the worse in the story of The Ass and his Masters.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Old Man and the Ass, The Aesop's Fables La Fontaine's Fables Fables by Laurentius Abstemius Fictional donkeys