Wall Street Protesters should read.
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JMO
The Ant and the Grasshopper
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Coloured print of La Fontaine's fable by Jean-Baptiste Oudry
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
The Ants and the Grasshopper
The Ant and the Grasshopper, also known as The Grasshopper and the Ant (or Ants), is one of Aesop's Fables, providing an ambivalent moral lesson about hard work and foresight. In the Perry Index it is number 373.[1] The fable has been adapted or reinterpreted in a number of works from the 19th century to the present.
Contents
[hide] 1 The fable and its negative version
2 The fable in art
3 Later adaptations
4 Musical settings
5 Movie and TV treatments
6 The moral debate
7 See also
8 References
9 External links
[edit] The fable and its negative version
The fable concerns a grasshopper that has spent the warm months singing while the ant (or ants in some editions) worked to store up food for winter. When that season arrives, the grasshopper finds itself dying of hunger and upon asking the ant for food is only rebuked for its idleness. Versions of the fable are found in the verse collections of Babrius (140) and Avianus (34), and in several prose collections including those attributed to Syntipas and Apthonius. In a variant prose form of the fable (Perry 112), the lazy animal is a dung beetle which finds that the winter rains wash away the dung on which it feeds. In its Greek original, as well as in its Latin and Romance translations, the grasshopper is in fact a cicada.
The story is used to teach the virtues of hard work and saving, and the perils of improvidence. Some versions of the fable state a moral at the end, along the lines of "Idleness brings want", "To work today is to eat tomorrow", "Beware of winter before it comes". The point of view is supportive of the ant and is also that expressed in the Book of Proverbs, a book of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament), which admonishes, "Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest" (6:6-9).
There was, nevertheless, an alternative tradition in which the ant was seen as a bad example. This was expressed as a counter-fable in Greek which appears as number 166 in the Perry Index.[2] It relates that the ant was once a man who was always busy farming. Not satisfied with the results of his own labour, he plundered his neighbours' crops at night. This angered the king of the gods, who turned him into what is now an ant. Yet even though the man had changed his shape, he did not change his habits and still goes around the fields gathering the fruits of other people's labour, storing them up for himself. The moral of the fable is that it is easier to change in appearance than to change one's moral nature. The fable was rarely noticed and, though of Aesopic origin, has not been accepted as such into later collections. Among the few who recorded it were Gabriele Faerno (1564), whose Latin poem on the theme was widely translated,[3] and Roger L'Estrange (1692).[4] The latter's comment is that the ant's 'Vertue and Vice, in many Cases, are hardly Distinguishable but by the Name'.
If the shoe fix.
JMO
The Ant and the Grasshopper
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Coloured print of La Fontaine's fable by Jean-Baptiste Oudry
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
The Ants and the Grasshopper
The Ant and the Grasshopper, also known as The Grasshopper and the Ant (or Ants), is one of Aesop's Fables, providing an ambivalent moral lesson about hard work and foresight. In the Perry Index it is number 373.[1] The fable has been adapted or reinterpreted in a number of works from the 19th century to the present.
Contents
[hide] 1 The fable and its negative version
2 The fable in art
3 Later adaptations
4 Musical settings
5 Movie and TV treatments
6 The moral debate
7 See also
8 References
9 External links
[edit] The fable and its negative version
The fable concerns a grasshopper that has spent the warm months singing while the ant (or ants in some editions) worked to store up food for winter. When that season arrives, the grasshopper finds itself dying of hunger and upon asking the ant for food is only rebuked for its idleness. Versions of the fable are found in the verse collections of Babrius (140) and Avianus (34), and in several prose collections including those attributed to Syntipas and Apthonius. In a variant prose form of the fable (Perry 112), the lazy animal is a dung beetle which finds that the winter rains wash away the dung on which it feeds. In its Greek original, as well as in its Latin and Romance translations, the grasshopper is in fact a cicada.
The story is used to teach the virtues of hard work and saving, and the perils of improvidence. Some versions of the fable state a moral at the end, along the lines of "Idleness brings want", "To work today is to eat tomorrow", "Beware of winter before it comes". The point of view is supportive of the ant and is also that expressed in the Book of Proverbs, a book of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament), which admonishes, "Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest" (6:6-9).
There was, nevertheless, an alternative tradition in which the ant was seen as a bad example. This was expressed as a counter-fable in Greek which appears as number 166 in the Perry Index.[2] It relates that the ant was once a man who was always busy farming. Not satisfied with the results of his own labour, he plundered his neighbours' crops at night. This angered the king of the gods, who turned him into what is now an ant. Yet even though the man had changed his shape, he did not change his habits and still goes around the fields gathering the fruits of other people's labour, storing them up for himself. The moral of the fable is that it is easier to change in appearance than to change one's moral nature. The fable was rarely noticed and, though of Aesopic origin, has not been accepted as such into later collections. Among the few who recorded it were Gabriele Faerno (1564), whose Latin poem on the theme was widely translated,[3] and Roger L'Estrange (1692).[4] The latter's comment is that the ant's 'Vertue and Vice, in many Cases, are hardly Distinguishable but by the Name'.
