A Horse, proud of his fine trappings, met an Ass on the highway. The Ass, being heavily laden, moved slowly out of the way. “Hardly,” said the Horse, “can I resist kicking you with my heels.” The Ass held his peace, and made only a silent appeal to the justice of the gods. Not long afterwards the Horse, having become broken-winded, was sent by his owner to the farm. The Ass, seeing him drawing a dungcart, thus derided him: “Where, O boaster, are now all thy gay trappings, thou who are thyself reduced to the condition you so lately treated with contempt?”
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Aesop was an ancient Greek storyteller, traditionally believed to have lived around 620–564 BCE, whose fables have shaped moral literature across the world for over two millennia. "The Horse and the Ass" is one of many fables in which Aesop uses working animals to expose the folly of pride and the unpredictability of fortune.
