210 ONE THOUSAND FAMOUS THINGS
On our way home, however, we discovered a body of lambs at the
bottom of a deep ravine, and the indefatigable Sirrah standing in.
front of them, looking all around for some relief but still standing
true to his charge.
The sun was then up ; and when we first came in view of them we
concluded that it was one of the divisions which Sirrah had been
unable to manage until he came to that commanding situation, but
what was our astonishment when we discovered that not one Iamb
of the whole flock was wanting ! How he had got all the divisions
collected in the dark is beyond my comprehension. The charge was
left entirely to himself from midnight until the rising of the sun ; and
if all the shepherds in the forest had been there to have assisted him
they could not have affected it with greater propriety. All that I can
further say is that I never felt so grateful to any creature below the
sun. as I did to my honest Sirrah that morning.
Story told by James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd
The Slave to His Master
In the Festival of Saturn the slave of ancient Rome might do as he pleased, for
all were equal during Saturnalia. Here the poet Horace makes a slave talk to his
master freely in those days of privilege.
You praise the fortune and the manners of men of old, and yet, if
on a sudden some god were for taking you back to those days,
you would refuse. What if you are found to be a greater fool even
than I, who cost you five hundred drachmas ?
Are you my master, you, a slave to the dominion of so many men
and things—you whom the praetor's rod, though placed on your head
three or four times over, never frees from base terror ? Why, you
who lord it over me are the wretched slave of another master, and
you are moved like a wooden puppet by wires that others pull.
Who, then, is free ? The wise man who is lord over himself, whom
neither poverty nor death nor bonds affright, who bravely defies his
passions, and scorns ambition, who in himself is a whole, smoothed
and rounded, so that nothing from outside can rest on the polished
surface, and against whom Fortune in her onset is ever maimed.
Of these traits can you recognise any one as your own ? You
cannot, for you have a master, and no gentle one, plaguing your soul,
pricking your weary side with the sharp spur, and driving you on
against your will.
If I am tempted by a smoking pasty, I am a good-for-naught, but
you—does your heroic virtue defy rich suppers ?
And you cannot bear to be in your own company, you cannot
employ your leisure aright, you shun yourself, a runaway, a vagabond,
seeking now with wind and now with sleep to baffle Care. In vain :
that black consort dogs you and follows your flight.