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Illustrations by
GAVIN WESTON

 

 

 

AN APOLLO BOOK

www.headofzeus.com

 

 

 

 

 

Carlo Gébler:

For Sam, Bill and Noah

Gavin Weston:

For Holly and Adam

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CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

About the Contributors

Introduction

Prologue: The People and Their Pouches

1: CAPRICE, ARROGANCE AND THE EXERCISE OF ARBITRARY POWER

1.    The Good and the Bad Things

2.    The Hawk and the Nightingale

3.    The Cock and the Cat

4.    The Disappointed Fishermen

5.    The Wood-Cutter and the Fox

6.    The Frogs Who Demanded a King

7.    Aphrodite and the Lovesick House-Ferret

8.    The Little Gudgeon, the Dolphins and the Whales

9.    The Lion in the Cave and the Hind

10.  The Bramble and the Silver Fir Tree

11.  The Earth and Hermes

12.  Shame and Zeus

13.  King Fox and Zeus

14.  Apollo and Zeus

15.  The Archive of Human Crimes

16.  The Shellfish and the Dog

17.  The Vixen and the Lioness

18.  The Clever Lamb and the Wolf

19.  Zeus and the Asses

20.  The Man and the Flea

2: IRRECONCILABILITY, CONFLICT AND VENGEANCE

21.  The Vixen and the Eagle

22.  The Beetle and the Eagle

23.  Aesop in the Boatyard

24.  The Partridge and the Cocks

25.  The Quarrel

26.  The Killer

27.  The Poor Man

28.  The Vine and the Hind

29.  The Water Snake, the Adder and the Frogs

30.  The Dog and the Gardener

31.  The Fox and the Old Lion

32.  The Fox, the Ass and the Lion

33.  The Frog and the Mouse

34.  The Bear and the Travellers

35.  Horkos, the God of Oaths and the Man

36.  The Father and His Daughters

37.  Hybris and Polemos

38.  The Huntsman, the Horse and the Wild Boar

39.  The Snake and the Wasp

40.  The Ants and the Cicada

3: SELF-DECEPTION, STUPIDITY AND IDIOCY

41.  The Desperate Vendor

42.  The Copy-Cat

43.  The Slave

44.  The Goatherd and the Goat

45.  The Bunch of Grapes and the Fox

46.  The Monkey and the Fox Dispute Their Nobility

47.  Hermes and the Man Bitten by an Ant

48.  The Stargazer

49.  The Fox and the Frog Doctor

50.  The File and the House-Ferret

51.  The Frozen Snake and the Ploughman

52.  The Children and Their Father, the Farmer

53.  The Servants and Their Mistress

54.  The Lion and the Stag at the Spring

55.  The Breakdown of the Chariot of Hermes

56.  The Two Enemies in the One Boat

57.  The Jar of Things That Did People Good

58.  The Reflection and the Dog

59.  The Ass and His Burdens

60.  The Passengers at Sea

4: AMBITION, OVERWEENING AND OVERREACH

61.  The Debtor from Athens

62.  The Eagle and the Two Cocks

63.  The Foxes on the Bank of the River

64.  The Greedy Fox

65.  The Python and the Fox

66.  The Man and the False Promise

67.  The Chancer

68.  The Blowhard

69.  The Fox and the Farmer

70.  The Statue and the Man

71.  Herakles and the Ox-Driver

72.  Chance and the Ploughman

73.  Diogenes at the River

74.  The Sculptor and Hermes

75.  Teiresias and Hermes

76.  The Kite and the Snake

77.  The Heron and the Wolf

78.  Spring and Winter

79.  The Eagle and the Tortoise

80.  The Hare and the Tortoise

5: SELFISHNESS, SELF-INTEREST AND SELF-LOVE

81.  The Picarel and the Fisherman

82.  The Fisherman Who Made the River Muddy

83.  The Leopard and the Fox

84.  The Fox Who Lost His Tail

85.  The Ravens and the Fearful Man

86.  The Two Mistresses and the Middle-Aged Man

87.  The Fuller and the Charcoal Burner

88.  The Lion and the Cowherd

89.  The Dead Tree and the Ploughman

90.  The Quarrelsome Sons of the Ploughman

6: GLOATING AND HEARTLESSNESS

91.  The Bramble and the Fox

92.  The Billy-Goat and the Fox

93.  The Monster Mask and the Fox

94.  The Drunkard and His Wife

95.  The Prophetess

96.  The Ox and the Heifer

97.  Zeus and the Oak Trees

98.  The Wolf and the Kid-Goat on the Roof

99.  The Metal File and the Adder

100.  The Shark and the Tunny-Fish

101.  The Fox and the Jackdaw

102.  The Fox and the Raven

103.  The Biting Dog and His Bell

104.  The Hare and the Lion

105.  The Fox, the Wolf and the Old Lion

106.  The Itinerant Priests and Their Ass

107.  The Young Ant and the Young Scarab Beetle

108.  The Domestic Ass and the Wild Ass

109.  The Vine and the Billy-Goat

110.  The House-Ferret and the Parrot

7: JEALOUSY, COVETOUSNESS AND GREED

111.  The Donkey and the Goat

112.  Aphrodite and the Slave Girl

113.  The Crocodile and the Fox

114.  The Monkey Elected King and the Fox

115.  Zeus and the First Men

116.  The Gold Lion and the Man Who Found It

117.  Zeus, the Camel and the Bull

118.  The Pigeons and the Jackdaw

119.  The Dogs

120.  The Lion and the Wolf

121.  Zeus and the Bees

122.  The House-Ferrets and the Mice

123.  The Flies and the Honey

124.  The Butcher and the Young Men

125.  Hermes and the Wood-Cutter

126.  The Floating Tree and the Travellers

127.  The Ass and the Mule

128.  The Ass and the Lapdog

129.  The Cicada and the Ass

130.  The Cranes and the Wild Geese

8: CUNNING, GUILE AND INSIGHT

131.  The Eagle and the Two Captors

132.  The Swallow and the Nightingale

133.  The Mice and the Cat

134.  The Wild Goats and the Goatherd

135.  The Tunny-Fish and the Fisherman

136.  The Sun and the North Wind

137.  Death and the Old Man

138.  The Eagle and the Ploughman

139.  The Dogs and the Ploughman

140.  Demades the Orator

141.  Hermes and the Artisans

142.  The Belly and the Feet

143.  The Bitten Traveller

144.  The Cock, the Dog and the Fox

145.  The Wild Ass and the Lion

146.  The Lamb and the Wolf

147.  The Ewe and the Injured Wolf

148.  The House-Ferrets and the Bat

149.  Hermes and the Traveller

150.  The Swallow and the Crow

9: BITTER WORDS, REBUKES, BARBS AND SAVAGERIES

151.  The Fisherman Who Was a Flute-Player

152.  The Shipwrecked Man

153.  The Man Unable to See

154.  The Lion and the Man Travelling Together

155.  The Satyr and the Man

156.  The Fox and the Bear

157.  The Axle and the Oxen

158.  The Bat and the Linnet

159.  The Doctor and the Old Woman

160.  The Wood-Cutter and the Cowardly Hunter

161.  The Sheep and the Young Pig

162.  The Bald Man and Diogenes

163.  The Pine and the Wood-Cutters

164.  The Fox and the Adder

165.  The Flute-Playing Wolf and the Dancing Kid

166.  The Castrate and the Priest

167.  The Camel Who Shat in the River

168.  The Dog Who Did Not Get Dinner

169.  The Sleeping Dog and the Wolf

170.  The Crane and the Peacock

10: LAST GRIEFS OR A SERIES OF EPILOGUES

171.  The Eagle and the Arrow

172.  The Halcyon

173.  The Wolf and the Ploughman

174.  The Snake and the Labourer

175.  The Champion Hen and the Widow

176.  The Half-Blind Hind

177.  The First People and Zeus

178.  The Snake and the Bird-Catcher

179.  The Famished Dogs

180.  The Lion and the Gnat

181.  The Stag, the Fox and the Lion

182.  The Fox, the Bear and the Lion

183.  The Lion and the Wolf Proud of His Shadow

184.  The Lion, the Cock and the Ass

185.  The Lion, the Ass and the Fox261

186.  The Wolf and the Ass Who Pretended to Be Lame

187.  The Son and the Painted Lion

188.  The Dolphin and the Monkey

189.  The Professional Mourners and the Rich Man

190.  The Trumpeter

List of Illustrations

A Note on the Text

An Invitation from the Publisher

 

 

 

 

 

‘A fable is a bridge that leads to truth.’

Racial Proverbs, S.G. Champion, 1950

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

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Aesop is allegedly the author of a collection of Greek fables. Whether he existed or not is moot, though many attempts were made in ancient times to establish Aesop as a person. Herodotus said he lived in the sixth century BC and was a slave. Plutarch made him an adviser to Croesus, king of Lydia. A first-century Egyptian hagiography has him as a slave on the island of Samos who then went on to serve the King of Babylon, among others. In all probability Aesop was an invention created to dignify fabular materials with an author, and as a result the fable form and the name became synonymous. On the other hand, perhaps there really was an Aesop …

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Carlo Gébler was born in Dublin in 1954 and lives outside Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. He is the author of novels including The Innocent of Falkland Road, short story collections including The Wing Orderly’s Tales, and the memoirs Father & I and The Projectionist: The Story of Ernest Gébler. He has also written novels for children and plays for radio and the stage, including 10 Rounds, which was shortlisted for the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. From 1991 to 1997 he taught in HMP Maze, and from 1997 to 2015 he was writer-in-residence in HMP Maghaberry. He currently teaches at Trinity College Dublin, and the American College, as well as Hydebank Wood College where he works with young male and female prisoners. He is a member of Aosdána.

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Gavin Weston was born in Belfast in 1962. He lives on the Ards Peninsula with an ancient dog and a cantankerous parrot. He studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins and Goldsmiths, London, before moving to Niger where he taught English and worked for the American NGO Africare. Returning to Ireland, he taught art (at Belfast Metropolitan College and Ulster University) while continuing to exhibit and create a number of prize-winning public artworks. He is the author of the novel Harmattan, set in West Africa, and was a columnist for The Sunday Times for many years. Working as writer-in-residence at HMP Magilligan, he met and became friends with Carlo Gébler and founded and edited the prison magazine TIME IN. Gavin is an ambassador and passionate advocate for the London-based NGO, FORWARD, which campaigns to end child marriage.

INTRODUCTION

I

The Oxford English Dictionary describes a fable as a story not founded on fact. It doesn’t define an Aesop fable but perhaps a workable definition might be: a story not founded on fact that comes with a moral attached. This combination has always been a difficult proposition. When story and moral work in harmony, the reader experiences an ‘Oh yes …’ moment and a rush of pleasure, but when story and moral are not in harmony, the reader experiences an ‘Oh no …’ moment and a jolt of displeasure. We will always hate what ‘has a palpable design upon us’, said Keats, speaking of poetry though his argument applies to all literary forms, and certainly, as far as Aesop’s work is concerned, many readers, especially modern ones, have spurned it because of morals that are too obvious, too insistent or too bumptious.

II

Whether or not there was an actual Aesop, who wrote the fables that carry his name, is contested. Martin Luther, the theologian, believed Aesop was a fiction. However, should we prefer to believe there was such a figure, then we can turn to the Life of Aesop, an ancient Greek text of uncertain provenance. It was probably composed sometime during the first century A.D. and it almost certainly recycles material from earlier accounts of Aesop’s life.

Aesop, according to the Life of Aesop, is born sometime in the fifth century B.C. (so about five or six hundred years before the composition of the Life). His place of birth is variously stated as Thrace, Phrygia, Ethiopia, Samos, Athens or Sardis. Physically he is dark-skinned (it is said his name derives from Aethiop, meaning Ethiopian) and he is hobbled by a long list of physical deformities: a swollen head, squint eyes, a fat lip, a snub nose, short arms, a pot belly, a hunched back, flat-feet, bandy legs and (in the language of the day) dwarfish stature. He also has a serious speech impediment or might even be mute.

Aesop is born a slave or captured at an early age and made a slave. At some point (in adolescence or very early adulthood) he treats a priestess of the goddess Isis with such kindness that she gives him the gift of speech. He immediately uses his new talent to denounce his overseer to his master as a vicious, vindictive bully who makes the lives of the slaves in the household (himself included) utterly intolerable. It’s a first sign of an antagonism towards power that will later surface in his fables.

Because he has spoken out, the master decides to be rid of Aesop in case he ferments rebelliousness among the other slaves. Aesop is transported to Ephesus (in modern Turkey) and put up for sale. However, because of his appearance and his impairments, no one will buy him. He is shipped on to the island of Samos where a second attempt is made to sell him. At the market, Xanthus, a potential buyer and an eminent philosopher (whose existence can’t be verified historically either), is visibly disgusted by Aesop’s defects. Aesop, however, has a brilliant response to Xanthus’s revulsion. A philosopher, Aesop says, should value a man for his mind rather than his body. Xanthus is impressed and perhaps chastened. He buys Aesop for his wife. He will be her manservant.

Aesop moves into Xanthus’s home where he reveals himself to be a clever, shrewd, sarcastic, mercurial fellow: part trickster, part fool and a maverick who can untie seemingly intractable problems by the application of remorseless logic and reason. Here is a typical story from this period.

Xanthus must leave home and go somewhere, but he’s anxious about what might happen on the journey. He sends Aesop outside to see if there are any crows around. According to popular belief, two crows are a portent of good fortune, while one crow is sign of bad luck. Aesop spots two crows outside and returns to Xanthus with the good news. The augury is good. He can make the journey.

Xanthus, delighted, throws the door open, steps out and sees … a single crow. One of the pair that Aesop spotted has just flown away.

Xanthus aborts his expedition and rounds furiously on his slave. Aesop had reported two crows, says Xanthus, when in truth there was only one, and had he set off, as the omen foretold, he would doubtless have met disaster. To teach his slave to be more careful, Xanthus issues orders for Aesop to be whipped.

As Aesop is waiting to receive his punishment a messenger comes to Xanthus’s house with a dinner invitation. Xanthus is delighted and accepts. When Aesop learns about this he realises that he can now stop his impending whipping because there is a glaring inconsistency in Xanthus’s thinking.

Your omens, Aesop says to Xanthus, are the wrong way round. His good omen has ended in misfortune, while Xanthus’s bad omen has ended in good fortune. He, Aesop, who saw two crows, an auspicious omen, will shortly be flogged like a dog, whereas Xanthus, who saw one crow, an inauspicious omen, will soon be making merry with his friends at supper. Clearly, the omens mean the reverse of what they’re supposed to mean, which makes them meaning-less. Aesop’s argument persuades Xanthus. He scrubs Aesop’s beating. The demolition of certainties through the ruthless exposure of internal contradiction, as here, will be one of the hallmarks of Aesop’s fables.

After Xanthus (and possibly this has something to do with Xanthus’s wife – perhaps she and Aesop are lovers), Aesop, still a slave, is passed on to Iadmon, a Samian. The latter, like Xanthus, is also impressed with Aesop. He grants Aesop his freedom. Aesop is now at liberty to forge an independent life. He becomes an adviser to the king of Babylon and he helps the king win a battle of wits with the king of Egypt. Aesop is rewarded handsomely for his expertise and thereafter he becomes a fixer, adviser and helper to orators, tyrants and politicians. His numerous employers value many things about him but what they value most of all is his narrative capacity. When he acts for you Aesop doesn’t simply make an argument or construct a case. He does something else. He tells stories – small, sharp fabular ones – and then, by the addition of a little addendum or moral (and the connections are ingenious), he interprets these stories in the interests of his clients. Typically, the morals have three parts experienced in the following order. The first is the italicised sentence before the fable, which announces what’s coming, known as the promythium (Greek pro-mythos, ‘before-story’). The second is the understanding expressed by the character inside the story, which shows what the character has grasped, known as the endomythium (Greek endo-mythos, ‘inside-story’). And the third is the italicised sentence after the fable, which summarises the message of the story that’s just been told, known as the epimythium (Greek epi-mythos, ‘after-story’). Not all fables come with all three but all come with one or two addenda that bridge the gap between the fiction and the present moment. These meanings (the morals wrung from the text), at least when Aesop is in charge, are surprisingly local and particular as well as wonderfully clever.

For instance, acting on behalf of a demagogue on Samos who is on trial (if found guilty he will pay with his life), Aesop offers the following narrative in his defence to the court.

A vixen is crossing a river. She is caught by the current and washes up in a gully. The gully is deep and she can’t get out. The sides are too steep. Besides being trapped, the vixen is also rotten with ticks. A hedgehog, who lives in the gully, offers to pick the ticks off her body. This won’t help her to get out of the gully but at least it will mean she won’t be tormented by tick bites any more. The vixen, however, declines the hedgehog’s offer. The hedgehog is puzzled. He asks her to explain. Her ticks, she says, have been sucking away at her for ages, albeit there’s almost nothing left for them to take at this point. However, if these ticks go, she says, they will be replaced by new ticks who will be hungry, aggressive and indefatigable. They will drink whatever blood is left in her body and she will die.

Using his fable as a springboard, Aesop then makes the following argument on the defendant’s behalf. He likens the islanders to the old vixen and the demagogue on trial to one of the fat, engorged ticks stuck to her, adding that of course it’s wealth not blood he’s swollen with, the wealth of the people of Samos. The demagogue can be executed, Aesop concedes, but that will not be the end of the demagoguery. He will be replaced and the new demagogue will suck the people of Samos dry and then the people will find they are worse off than they would have been had they kept their old demagogue, which is exactly what the vixen understood. You’re better off with familiar than unfamiliar tormenters. The old won’t kill you, while the new will.

Aesop’s technique (telling stories and then connecting them to the moment) is successful. He wins arguments for a lot of clients. His work also becomes ubiquitous. Listeners, having heard his fables, find they are compelled to retell them and as a result they spread. The effect of this combination of political success and literary reach is that Aesop becomes one of the best-known individuals in the world as it is in the fifth century B.C.

And then, he falls. He visits Delphi, the city with the famous oracle. Here, he disrespects the local aristocracy and the city’s principal deity, Apollo. This isn’t surprising. He’s always been outspoken, pugilistic and ready to disparage vested interest and received opinion. The Delphians are outraged. They ‘plant’ a gold cup in his luggage. Then they ‘discover’ the cup. They accuse Aesop of stealing from the oracle’s temple, a sacrilegious crime and a capital offence. He is brought to trial. In his defence, Aesop deploys several of his own fables with moral addendums. One of these is ‘The Frog and the Mouse’ (number 33 in the present collection). In this tale a frog and a mouse, who are tied together by twine, swim together in a pool. Then the frog dives, dragging the mouse down into the depths. The mouse drowns. The bloated corpse of the mouse floats to the surface, with the frog still attached. The mouse is seized and carried away by a bird of prey, and the frog, who is still tied to the mouse, is taken too. Both are then eaten. Aesop connects the fable to the predicament in which he finds himself in the following way. He’s the mouse and the Delphians are the frog, he says, and he and the Delphians are tied like the mouse and the frog are. They can kill him but then they will die too because he and they are connected.

The court are not persuaded by this conceit. Aesop is found guilty. He is taken to the cliff where prisoners are executed and he is hurled to his death. Shortly after this, famine, pestilence and war beset Delphi. The Delphians consult their Oracle of Apollo and learn that their woes are the direct result of their mistreatment of Aesop and his unjust death. It turns out they were tied after all, just like the mouse and the frog. The oracle instructs the Delphians to make amends for their offence and the city builds a pyramid in Aesop’s honour.

III

Aesop is first referenced by other writers in the fifth century B.C. In his history of the Greco-Persian wars, the Greek historian Herodotus describes Aesop as a historical figure from Thrace (the modern Balkans) who had lived on the island of Samos in the Aegean Sea, near the coast of modern Turkey.

In The Birds, Herodotus’s near contemporary, Aristophanes, the comic playwright, has the character Pisthetaerus chide the Chorus Leader for his failure to go over his Aesop. Then he summarises the Aesop fable that the Chorus Leader would have known had he been across his Aesop. From the play text it’s clear that Aristophanes is sure that everyone in the audience will agree with Pisthetaerus. Everyone who’s anyone knows their Aesop.

The earliest surviving written collection of Aesop’s fables is the work of Phaedrus: born a slave in Thrace in about 15 B.C., he moves to Italy, gains his freedom and produces his version (five books, ninety-four fables) in Rome. Phaedrus’s version is notable for two innovations. They’re written in verse and there’s no ‘inside-story’ moral. Instead, Phaedrus relies on the morals appended top and bottom.

Many writers follow Phaedrus and produce their own version, often in verse. Aesop’s fables also attract the attention of pedagogues who see that they can use the fables to teach grammar, rhetoric and, most importantly, morality. This is a huge change. In the ancient world, Aesop’s fables are for adults and their morals aren’t closed. They are open and endlessly varied. Speakers are free to repurpose the fables as occasion demands. But once the pedagogues get hold of Aesop, work which was once playful and ambiguous is remade into a tool for the inculcating of approved norms. This begins to happen in English with Caxton, and by the time we come to Roger L’Estrange’s English translation, published 1692, with its foreword that states its explicit function is the initiation into children of ‘Sense’, the process is complete. Aesop, at least in English, is now the means by which moral absolutes are shoehorned into the heads of the impressionable young. And that idea that Aesop and moral instruction come as a package has been with us, more or less, ever since.

IV

Broadly speaking, Aesop has two subjects – the exercise of power and the experience of the powerless who endure life and all that it inflicts on them.

In his fables, the gods and goddesses who exercise power tend to be capricious, wilful, thoughtless and unforgiving, while the powerless, the mortals (many of whom are animals) who endure life and all that it inflicts on them tend to be blind, deluded, foolish and careless. The discrepancy between the powerful and the powerless is a source of humour but it is also the basis of Aesop’s critique. The human world, as Aesop has it, is a place of rough justice, deep hurt, epic cruelty and unstinting monstrousness.

When we are in trouble, as we are today, we revert to the literature of the ancients. We do this because this literature seems more relevant than modern literary art. This is certainly the reason why we, who both loved Aesop’s fables when we were children, have gone back to his work. His stories may be full of idiosyncrasies and impossibilities but the bitter truth lurking within the fables seems absolutely of the moment, of now – our rulers are detached and their subjects are suffering; life is unfair and justice is a fantasy. In the fables, as presented on the following pages with all their fabular integrity (speaking animals, thoughtful satyrs, capricious gods, et cetera) intact, we believe you will find the present. We hope this will be a salutary experience, and, who knows, perhaps it may even catalyse resistance or focus opposition to the present moment and to modern times.

The source of the fables that follow is Émile Chambry’s Ésope Fables. Chambry has 358 fables in his collection. We have selected 190 of these: the ones that struck us as the ones that hurt the most. We have grouped these according to our own system and then rewritten them in new language. Our intention is they should be read by adults and not children. We understand and sympathise with the contempt bad morals have provoked, but we’ve opted to keep them in this version because not to keep them would violate the spirit of Aesop. It is our hope, however, that our morals, rather than trivialising, violating or undermining the fables, darken, extend and amplify them.

Carlo Gébler and Gavin Weston

PROLOGUE

The People and Their Pouches

‘It’s time to make the first people,’ Prometheus announced to the gods, ‘and fill the earth with them.’

‘These creations had better be good,’ said Zeus. ‘I don’t want the planet overrun by idiots.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Prometheus. ‘They’ll be great.’

Prometheus went out onto the slopes of Mount Olympus and dug down till he found the special dense red clay he needed. He built a kiln. He made charcoal. With pine twigs he fashioned human frames; half were wide-hipped and female, and half were narrow-hipped and male.

Next, he wet the clay and daubed layer upon layer onto the pine frames to make people with legs and feet, fingers and toes, hands and noses. He fired his kiln, he baked his figures. Once they were cooked, he breathed into their mouths and their substance became flesh. Their eyes opened and they stood up.

Just then, Prometheus heard footsteps. He turned. It was Zeus with a bundle of carrying-pouches: leather made, open at the top, with straps.

‘What’s with the pouches?’ asked Prometheus.

‘These,’ said the great god as he threw them down, ‘are a little something for your people. You’re going to love them.’

‘Really?’ thought Prometheus. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Okay, people,’ said Zeus. ‘Ladies first.’

The woman closest stepped forward. Zeus took two pouches and hung one down her back and the other down her front.

‘All the mistakes made by other people will go in the front pouch,’ Zeus explained. ‘You’ll want them there, of course, where you can keep an eye on them. And all your own mistakes will go in the pouch at the back. Well, you won’t want to be looking at your own mistakes all the time, will you? Next …’

The pouches handed out and the people dispatched, the two gods, finally, were alone.

‘Wouldn’t it have been better for people to have their own mistakes in front where they can see them and the mistakes of others behind?’

‘No,’ said the great god, ‘it’s much better they focus on what’s wrong with everyone else and never see what’s wrong with themselves, obviously. This way they’ll be arguing non-stop, which will be hugely entertaining, plus, because they’ll be fighting all the time, they’ll never come together to challenge our right to rule. Never. I’m telling you, these pouches will be the saving of us gods.’

‘The gorged wolf does more harm than the hungry one,’ thought Prometheus. ‘This has to be the worst idea ever.’ He said nothing of course.

Meddling is the privilege of the powerful.

1

CAPRICE, ARROGANCE AND THE EXERCISE OF ARBITRARY POWER

1.
The Good and the Bad Things

The things on earth that did people good were followed everywhere by the things that did them bad, and everyone thought they were the same. But they weren’t: they were different. And for the things that did good, being mistaken for the things that did bad was hateful. They wanted the confusion to stop, so they flew to Olympus to see what Zeus could suggest.

‘Oh well,’ said the great god, once they’d explained the problem, ‘this is easy. From today, you’ll live on Mount Olympus with me, while the things that do bad will live on earth. You’ll never be confused with them again.’

And the great god was right: the things that did people good, because they were such rare and exotic visitors (it was a long way to the earth and it was a journey they rarely made), never again were confused with the things that did people bad.

Unfortunately, there was a downside: Zeus’s scheme also guaranteed that for people life was one long round of misery, since they shared the planet only with the things that did them bad. Zeus didn’t notice this, of course, but even if he had, he wouldn’t have cared.

The crooked furrow is the work of the great bull.

2.
The Hawk and the Nightingale

The nightingale sat in the oak tree and sang her plangent, heart-troubling song.

A hawk passed overhead. First he heard, then he saw her. The hawk was hungry. ‘I shall have this one,’ he thought.

He swooped down and seized the little songbird in his sharp talons. He carried her to the ground and threw her down on her back. His plan – to kill and eat her.

Pinned down and looking up at the hawk, the nightingale said, ‘I’m only a morsel. You’ll still be hungry after you’ve eaten me. Wouldn’t you be better to find a bigger, proper meal?’

‘Ah ha!’ said the hawk. ‘Here we see most thoughts are wishes. Let you go in order to chase what I don’t have? No way.’

He broke the little bird’s neck with a hard blow from his heavy beak, split her up the front and tore out the first soft, red, bloody morsel …

Once he finished eating, the hawk wiped the blood from his beak using the corpse’s downy stomach feathers. Then, feeling full and clean and dry, he stretched his wings and rose slowly into the sky to look for his next meal.

Only fools fling away a sardine in the hope of a tuna.

3.
The Cock and the Cat

The cat pounced and floored the cock, pinning him to the earth.

‘You can’t eat me,’ said the bird, looking back at the cat’s mouth, its wiry whiskers, its sharp, nasty teeth. ‘Leave me alone. I’ve never harmed you.’

‘Maybe you haven’t hurt me directly,’ said the cat, ‘but you’re still an affront. Look at the racket you make every morning, ruining everyone’s sleep. No, you have to go.’

‘But I’m supposed to crow like that,’ said the cock, ‘and get everyone up. That’s my job.’

‘All right then,’ said the cat. ‘What about the way you breed with your sisters and your mother? That’s disgusting and absolutely sickening. No, you have to go.’

‘But that’s my job too,’ said the cock. ‘If I don’t mate with them, then the hens don’t produce eggs and that’s what my master wants – eggs. I have to do it.’

‘Listen,’ said the cat, ‘say whatever you want, I’m not going without my dinner. Not happening. An empty belly knows no law, you know.’

And with that she bit off his head and then she ate him.

He who does evil never lacks for an excuse.

4.
The Disappointed Fishermen

On the shore a group of fishermen flung their dragnet into the sea and then began to haul it out again.

It was hard work, for their net was heavier today than it had ever been at any time during all the years they’d worked together.

‘I’m telling you,’ said one of the younger, more excitable members of the team, ‘I’ve got a good feeling about this. I’d say we’ve got a catch here that’s going to make us all very rich.’

All the other fishermen agreed with him except the oldest. ‘Since you don’t know what we’ve actually caught,’ he said, ‘don’t assume anything.’

In the event, the old fisherman was right, for when they finally got the net up onto the shore, they found that all they had were rocks – masses and masses of them.

‘Oh no,’ said the excitable one. ‘There I was thinking we’d a bumper catch and look what it turns out we have. Well, to hell with the sea, I say, and to hell with the god who rules the sea as well. I’m done with fishing. I’m giving it up. Are you all with me?’

‘You bet,’ and, ‘Yes, I am,’ shouted the others with the exception, again, of the oldest.