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Commentary on Emblem 7
The poem is a fairly closely rendered fable from Aesop (Halm 324,
Perry 182), though in the Aesopan tradition the figure is "an
image of a god," not of Isis, whose presence heightens the sense
of the "mysteries." A slightly different ending emphasizes the
unhappiness of the driver (Perry, in his Loeb edition of Babrius
and Phaedrus, p. 456, translates: "Miserable creature, did this
too remain for me to experience, to behold you, an ass, bowed
down to by men?").
There is also the ancient proverb Asinus portans mysteria,
An ass that bears the mysteries (Erasmus Adages 2.2.4),
found in Aristophanes Frogs 159-60 ("God knows, an ass
that bears the mysteries / Am I; but I'll not carry them much
longer"), the moment played with in Apuleius Metamorphoses
8.24 when the narrator, transformed into an ass, carries about
the goddess Ceres.
A classical fable that applies nicely to 16th-century debates
over symbol and substance in the Christian faith.
Virginia Callahan has written a
commentary on the Latinity of the poem.
We have added two early English translations of the
emblem, and there is the well-known version in Whitney's Choice of Emblemes, on page 8 (you may
compare these in frames). And there is at
Glasgow a 1536 French translation of this emblem, conventionally number 35
by
Jean Lefevre (Alciato and this are also together in frames).

Last modified 1 May 1996