On scorpions.......................

 

“It is crazy to want what is impossible,” Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations. “And impossible for the wicked not to do so.” This is what Aesop’s fable about the scorpion and the frog is about. It’s what so much of the ancient literature tries to remind us of. That cruel people do cruel things. That selfish people act selfishly. That destructive people do destructive things.

Yet we don’t listen. We fail to learn the lesson and so we get hurt. The world painfully, painfully shows us the perils of not heeding this basic warning.

The wicked do what wicked people have always done. They are who they are. Stop expecting them to be anything else.

-from today's entry from the Daily Stoic

Choices.................................

In the famous tale by Ahiqar, later picked up by Aesop (then again by La Fontaine), the dog boasts to the wolf all the contraptions of comfort and luxury he has, almost prompting the wolf to enlist.  Until the wolf asks the dog about his collar and is terrified when he understands its use.  "'Of all your meals, I want nothing,'  He ran away and is still running."
     The question is:  what would you like to be, a dog or a wolf?

-Nassim Nicholas Taleb,  Skin In The Game:  Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

Aesop's tale of the Wolf and Dog is here

Checking in with Aesop.............

     A carter was driving a wagon along a country lane, when the wheels sank deep into a rut.  The rustic driver, stupefied and aghast, stood looking at the wagon, and did nothing but utter loud cries to Hercules to come and help him.  Hercules, it is said, appeared and thus addressed him:  "Put your shoulders to the wheels, my man.  Goad on your bullocks, and never pray to me for help, until you have done your best to help yourself, or depend upon it you will henceforth pray in vain"

     Self-help is the best help

-Aesop's Fables,  Hercules and the Wagoner

Frost tries his hand at Aesop.......

                 Haec Fabula Docet

A Blindman by the name of La Fontaine,

Relying on himself and his cane,

Came tap-tap-tapping down the village street,

The apogee of human blind conceit.

Now just ahead of him was seen to yawn

A trench where water pipes were laying on.

The Blindman might have found it with his ferule,

But someone overanxious at his peril

Not only warned him with a loud command

But ran against him with a staying hand.

Enraged at what he could but think officious,

The Blindman missed him with a blow so vicious

He gave his own poor iliac a wrench

And plunged himself head foremost in the trench:

Where with a glee no less for being grim

The workmen all turned too and buried him.

                            Moral

The moral is, it hardly need be shown,

All those who try to go it sole alone,

Too proud to be beholden for relief,

Are absolutely sure to come to grief.

-Robert Frost, 1946

Checking in with Aesop............

              The Lark and Her Young Ones

     A Lark had made her nest in the early spring on the young green wheat.  The brood had almost grown to their full strength and attained the use of their wings and the full plumage of their feathers, when the owner of the field, looking over his ripe crop, said, "The time has come when I must ask all my neighbors to help me with my harvest."  One of the young Larks heard his speech and related it to his mother, inquiring of her to what place they should move for safety. "There is no occasion to move yet, my son," she replied, "the man who only sends to his friends to help him with his harvest is not really in earnest."  The owner of the field came again a few days later and saw the wheat shedding the grain from excess ripeness.  He said, "I will come myself tomorrow with my laborers, and with as many reapers as I can hire, and will get in the harvest."  The Lark on hearing these words said to her brood, "It is time now to be off, my little ones, for the man is in earnest this time;  he no longer trusts his friends, but will reap the field himself."

     Self-help is the best help.

-Aesop,  Aesop's Fables

Checking in with Aesop...................................

     A Crab, forsaking the seashore, chose a neighboring green meadow as its feeding ground.  A Fox came across him, and being very hungry ate him up.  Just as he was on the point of being eaten, the Crab said, "I well deserve my fate, for what business had I on the land, when by my nature and habits I am only adapted for the sea?"

     Contentment with our lot is an element of happiness.

-Aesop,  Aesop's Fables


image, and further commentary, via

Checking in with Aesop........................

A Woodman went into the forest and begged of the Trees the favor of a handle for his Axe. The principal Trees at once agreed to so modest a request, and gave him a young ash tree, out of which he fashioned the handle he desired. No sooner had he done so than he set to work to fell the noblest Trees in the wood. When they saw the use to which he was putting their gift, they cried, "Alas! alas! We are undone, but we are ourselves to blame. The little we gave has cost us all: had we not sacrificed the rights of the ash, we might ourselves have stood for ages."

Moral:  In yielding the rights of others, we endanger our own.

Aesop's Fable: The Trees and the axe

illustration via

Checking in with Aesop...........................

                              The Dog and the Oyster

A Dog, used to eating eggs, saw an Oyster and, opening his mouth to its widest extent, swallowed it down with the utmost relish, supposing it to be an egg.  Soon afterwards suffering great pains in his stomach, he said, "I deserve all this torment, for my folly in thinking that everything round must be an egg."

Moral:  They who act without sufficient thought, will often fall into unexpected danger.

Checking in with Aesop..........................

A Stag overpowered by heat came to a spring to drink.  Seeing his own shadow reflected in the water, he greatly admired the size and variety of horns, but felt angry with himself for having such slender and weak feet.  While he was thus contemplating himself, a Lion appeared at the pool and crouched to spring upon him.  The Stag immediately took to flight, and exerting his utmost speed, as long as the plain was smooth and open kept himself easily at a safe distance from the Lion.  But entering a wood he became entangled by his horns, and the Lion quickly came up to him and caught him.  When too late, he thus reproached himself:  "Woe is me!  How I have deceived myself!  These feet which would have saved me I despised, and I gloried in these antlers which have proved my destruction."

Moral:  What is most truly valuable is often underrated.

via

Checking in with Aesop...........................

A man wished to purchase an Ass, and agreed with its owner that he should try out the animal before he bought him.  He took the Ass home and put him in the straw-yard with his other Asses, upon which the new animal left all the others and at once joined with the one that was the most idle and the greatest eater of them all.  Seeing this, the man put halter on him and led him back to his owner.  On being asked how, in so short a time, he could have made a trial of him, he answered, "I do not need a trial;  I know that he will be just the same as the one he chose for his companion."

Moral:  A man is known by the company he keeps.

Aesop's Fables as translated by George Fyler Townsend

Checking in with Aesop.........................

A famished fox saw some clusters of ripe black grapes hanging from a trellised vine.  She resorted to all her tricks to get at them, but wearied herself in vain, for she could not reach them.  At last she turned away, hiding her disappointment and saying:  "The Grapes are sour, and not as ripe as I thought."

Moral:  It is easy to despise what you cannot have.

image via

Checking in with Aesop...........................

     
                            The Peacock and the Crane

A Peacock spreading its gorgeous tail mocked a Crane that passed by, ridiculing the ashen hue of its plumage and saying, "I am robed, like a kink, in gold and purple and all the colors of the rainbow;  while you have not a bit of color on your wings."  "True," replied the Crane;  "but I soar to the heights of heaven and lift up my voice to the stars, while you walk below, like a cock, among the birds of the dunghill."

Moral:  Fine feathers don't make fine birds

Checking in with Aesop.........................

                                      The Bald Knight

A bald knight, who wore a wig, went out to hunt.  A sudden puff of wind blew off his hat and wig, at which a loud laugh rang forth from his companions.  He pulled up his horse, and with great glee joined in the joke by saying, "What marvel it is that hairs which are not mine should fly from me, when they have forsaken even the man on whose head they grew."

-Aesop, as channeled by George Fyler Townsend

Checking in with Aesop....................

   
                        The Oak and the Reeds

A very large oak was uprooted by the wind and thrown across a stream.  If fell among some Reeds, which were thus addressed:  "I wonder how you, who are so light and weak, are not entirely crushed by these strong winds."  They replied, "You fight and contend with the wind, and consequently you are destroyed;  while we on the contrary bend before the least breath of air, and therefore remain unbroken, and escape."

Moral:   Stoop to conquer.

Aesop's Fables as channeled by George Fyler Townsend

Checking in with Aesop............................

A traveler hired an Ass to convey him to a distant place.  The day being intensely hot, and the sun shining in its strength, the Traveler stopped to rest, and sought shelter from the heat under the Shadow of the Ass.  As this afforded only protection for one, and as the Traveler and the owner of the Ass both claimed it, a violent dispute arose between them as to which of them had the right to the Shadow.  The owner maintained that he had let the Ass only, and not his Shadow.  The Traveler asserted that he had, with the hire of the Ass, hired his Shadow also.  The quarrel proceeded from words to blows, and while the men fought, the Ass galloped off.

In quarreling about the shadow we often lose the substance.

-Aesop's Fables, as translated by George Fyler Townsend

Checking in with Aesop........................

                            The Shepherd and the Sea

A shepherd, keeping watch over his sheep near the shore, saw the Sea very calm and smooth, and longed to make a voyage with a view to commerce.  He sold all his flock, invested it in a cargo of dates, and set sail.  But a very great tempest came on, and the ship being in danger of sinking, he threw all his merchandise overboard, and barely escaped with his life in the empty ship.  Not long afterwards when someone passed by and observed the unruffled calm of the Sea, he interrupted him and said, "It is again in want of dates, and therefore looks quiet."

Visiting with Aesop....................

                                 The Horse and His Rider
A horse soldier took the utmost pains with his charger.  As long as the war lasted, he looked upon him as his fellow-helper in all emergencies and fed him carefully with hay and corn.  But when the war was over, he only allowed him chaff to eat and made him carry heavy loads of wood, subjecting him to much slavish drudgery and ill-treatment.  War was again proclaimed, however, and when the trumpet summoned him to his standard, the Soldier put on his charger its military trappings, and mounted, being clad in his heavy coat of mail.   The Horse fell down straightway under the weight, no longer equal to the burden, and said to his master, "You must now go to war on foot, for you have transformed me from a Horse to an Ass;  and how can you expect that I can again turn in a moment from an Ass to a Horse?"

Good question......................

                                   The Astronomer

An Astronomer used to to out at night to observe the stars.  One evening, as he wandered through the countryside with his whole attention fixed on the sky, he fell accidentally into a deep well.  While he lamented and bewailed his sores and bruises, and cried loudly for help, a neighbor ran to the well, and learning what had happened said:  "Hark ye, old fellow, why, in striving to pry what is in heaven, do you not manage to see what is on earth?"
-Aesop's Fables, as translated by George Fyler Townsend

Another chat with Aesop..........................

                         The Ants and the Grasshopper

The Ants were spending a fine winter's day drying grain collected in the summertime.  A Grasshopper, perishing with famine, passed by and earnestly begged for a little food.   The Ants inquired of him, "Why did you not treasure up food during the summer?"   He replied, "I had not leisure enough.  I passed the days in singing."   Then they said in derision:  "If you were foolish enough to sing all summer, you must dance supperless to bed in the winter."
-Aesop's Fables

Visiting with Aesop.........................

                     The Oak and the Woodcutters

The woodcutter cut down a Mountain Oak and split it into pieces, making wedges of its own branches for dividing the trunk.  The Oak said with a sigh,  "I do not care about the blows of the axe aimed at my roots, but I do grieve at being torn in pieces by these wedges made from my own branches."

Moral:  Misfortunes springing from ourselves are the hardest to bear.