The Miser and his Gold
The Miser and his Gold (or Treasure) is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 225 in the Perry Index.[1]
[edit] Alternative versions
The standard story is of a miser who reduced his riches to a lump of gold which he buried. Coming back to view it every day, he was spied and his treasure stolen. As the man bewailed his loss, he was consoled by a neighbour that he might as well bury a stone (or return to look at the hole) and it would serve the same purpose for all the good his money had done him or that he had done with his money. Since versions of the fable were confined to Greek, it only began to gain greater currency during the European Renaissance. Gabriele Faerno made it the subject of a Latin poem in his Centum Fabulae (1563).[2] Jean de la Fontaine included it among his Fables as "The miser who lost his treasure" (IV.20)[3]; in England it was included in collections of Aesop's fables by Roger L'Estrange as "A miser burying his gold"[4] and by Samuel Croxall as "The covetous man".[5]
The miser was a figure of fun from Classical times. Although there was no Latin version of the fable, the stage presentation of the character in the Aulularia of Plautus[6] was very influential. Molière adapted it into French as L'Avare (The Miser, 1668); in England Thomas Shadwell adapted Molière's work in 1672[7] and a version based on both Plautus and Molière was produced by Henry Fielding in 1732.[8]
Meanwhile, a parallel fable had entered European literature based upon a two-line epigram in the Greek Anthology, once ascribed to Plato but more plausibly to Statillius Flaccus. A man, intending to hang himself, discovered hidden gold and left the rope behind him; the man who had hidden the gold, not finding it, hanged himself with the noose he found in its place.[9] The 3rd century CE Latin poet Ausonius made a four-line version[10], the Tudor poet Thomas Wyatt extended this to eight lines[11] and the Elizabethan George Turberville to twelve.[12] Early in the 17th century, John Donne alluded to the story and reduced it to a couplet again:
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- Look, how he look'd that hid the gold, his hope,
- And at return found nothing but a rope.[13]
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Later that century, La Fontaine added this story too to his Fables as the lengthy “The treasure and the two men” (IX.15).[14]
[edit] References
- ^ Aesopica site
- ^ Fable 48
- ^ Translation online
- ^ Online version
- ^ Online version
- ^ Translated into blank verse in the 18th century by Bonnell Thornton, available on Google Books
- ^ Albert S. Borgman, Thomas Shadwell, his life and comedies, New York 1969, pp.141-7
- ^ "The Miser", available on Google Books
- ^ The Greek Anthology III, London 1917, pp.25-6
- ^ Ausonius with an English translation by Hugh G. Evelyn White, London 1921, p.161
- ^ "For shamefast harm of great and hatefull nede"
- ^ Cambridge History of English Literature III, London p.187
- ^ Elegy XIV, "A tale of a citizen and his wife", lines 64-5
- ^ Online translation
[edit] External Links
- 15th-20th century illustrations from books
