260 Part Two: Epigrams in Context
think too highly of yourself, lest you, lapsing into ämetr5a like the donkey, learn
the hard way what is good for you and what not; for you do not give in and you
do not listen to reason”. The other epigram by Nicholas the Patrician is not a
fable, but a short anecdote. There he tells us about a racing accident he once
witnessed: one day at the races, when everyone was having a good time, all of
a sudden one of the Hippodrome staff^51 slipped and fell down. His tragic death
was a reminder to all those present that life is all too short and that worldly
pleasures do not last: “therefore, brethren, let us be prepared for the unexpect-
ed end, lest we suddenly slide away from life and then cry in vain for not
having saved our souls”. This last sentence is once again an epimythion: it is the
“moral” of Nicholas’ story about the Hippodrome accident. Although the
story is not a fable in the literal sense of the word, its narrative structure and
its moralizing ending doubtless point in the direction of Aesop as the most
likely literary source of inspiration for the epigram. In fact, the objective of
this particular epigram is to cast a personal experience in the mould of Aesop’s
fables, to transform it into a moralizing story and to present it as a general
lesson from which other people may benefit. In short, Nicholas the Patrician
“aesopizes”. And he is certainly not the only Byzantine author to do so. In the
genre of the gnomic epigram we meet the mythical figure of Aesop time and
again, usually without an explicit reference to him or his fables. But once we
recognize the pattern, we cannot fail to see that in Byzantium “moralizing” is
more often than not tantamount to “aesopizing”.
**
*
Monastic Wisdom
The epigrams of Kassia form a mixture of profane and monastic wisdom.
On the one hand, there are epigrams that have nothing to do with monastic
life, such as A 56–57:
Ployt0n pl8qynon toáß ó5loyß ™k to ̄ plo7toy
Øna soy ptzce7santoß më ™kspasq0sin.“When you become wealthy, increase your friends with your wealth, so
that if you become poor, they may not fall away”. On the other hand, some of
her epigrams are definitely Christian, such as C 25–27:
(^51) The epigram calls this member of the Hippodrome staff tñn ™pò sco5noy: I am not familiar
with this function. He fell down from the troi2 of the Hippodrome. For this term, see
Herodianus, Partitiones, ed. J. BOISSONADE. London 1819, 234: troi2 dê 9 sco¦noß.