Alciato's Book of Emblems

Emblem 84

Lazy men

The old story was that a little heron with the radiance of a star depicted the labours and the habits of a lazy slave, and the story goes that the slave Asterias took on the shape of the bird. It is a fiction. Let there be faith in historians. The degenerate man, who like a falcon minces about in the air, is called Ardelio by the ancient poets.