The Oaks presented a complaint to Jupiter, saying, “We bear for no purpose the burden of life, as of all the trees that grow we are the most continually in peril of the axe.” Jupiter made answer: “You have only to thank yourselves for the misfortunes to which you are exposed: for if you did not make such excellent pillars and posts, and prove yourselves so serviceable to the carpenters and the farmers, the axe would not so frequently be laid to your roots.”
Credits
Aesop was an ancient Greek storyteller, believed to have lived around the 6th century BCE, whose fables have shaped moral literature across the world for over two millennia. "The Oaks and Jupiter" is one of his shorter pieces, distilling a sharp lesson about cause and consequence into a single exchange between nature and deity.
