Jupiter has loaded us with a couple of wallets: the one, filled with our own vices, he has placed at our backs; the other, heavy with those of others, he has hung before.3
A fly bit the bare pate of a bald man, who in endeavouring to crush it gave himself a hard slap. Then said the fly jeeringly, “You wanted to revenge the sting of a tiny insect with death; what will you do to yourself, who have added insult to injury?”
“I knew that before you were born.” Let him who would instruct a wiser man consider this as said to himself.
Book v. Fable 9, 4.
Note 1. Pliny in his “Natural History,” book viii, sect. 148, and Ælian in his “Various Histories” relate the same fact as to the dogs drinking from the Nile. “To treat a thing as the dogs do the Nile” was a common proverb with the ancients, signifying to do it superficially. [back]
