Laura Gibbs, Mille Fabulae et Una §128

A monkey, who did not know what he looked like and fancied himself rather handsome, caught sight of his own image faithfully thrown back by a mirror. Supposing the figure had nothing to do with him, he delighted in the sight; he laughed sourly, hurled sharp jokes at the witless beast, and praised the craftsman’s industrious hand. But someone said to him, “Come now — don’t you know yourself? That image is yours.” At this the monkey felt the harsh force of the truth, and now began to condemn the very mirror he had just been praising.

Those who are happy to mock a fault — until they discover it is their own.

Translation rendered by AI from the Latin in Mille Fabulae et Una; not from a published edition.

Wisdom Lesson

The fable is brief and exact. Its scene has only three parts — the ape, the mirror, and the bystander — and the joke turns on the third. So long as the ape thinks the ugly thing in the glass is somebody else, he is delighted: he laughs, he jeers, he even pauses to compliment the mirror-maker on a fine piece of work. The instant a single voice says tua est ipsa haec imago — that image is yours — everything reverses. The witty critic becomes the embarrassed subject. The praised mirror becomes the hated one.

What the fable exposes is not vanity — the ape’s self-image was already wrong — but the structure of his criticism. He had been mocking from a position he thought was safely outside the picture. The mirror does not change; only his location in front of it does. The same fault that earned a sour laugh when it belonged to bestiam inficetam, “a witless beast,” is suddenly intolerable when it turns out to belong to him. His final move — condemning the mirror that just told him the truth — is the move every age recognizes: when the instrument of self-knowledge becomes uncomfortable, attack the instrument.

The Latin understands this well: asperam vim veritatis — the harsh force of truth. Truth in this fable is not a proposition or an argument; it is a force that strikes, and what it strikes is one’s self-image. The wisdom literature of every tradition keeps a few mirrors handy for exactly this purpose — the prophet’s parable to David, the Pharisee’s prayer in Luke 18, Erasmus’s adage Cognosce te ipsum. Aesop’s contribution is to compress the whole machinery into one ape and one piece of polished metal.

Further reading: Aesop’s Mirror and the Know Thyself Tradition.

Language Lesson

Simius, qui nesciebat qualis esset et se putabat bellulum, effigiem suam vidit a speculo fideli redditam. Ratus simulacrum tale nihil ad se attinere, gaudet videndo; subamarus ridet, et iocos acres in bestiam inficetam iacit, et artificis manum industriam laudat. Sed aliquis dixit, “Heus, te ignoras? Tua est ipsa haec imago.” Simius hic asperam vim veritatis porro sentit et iam speculum damnare incipit, quod prius laudaverat.

Vocabulary

  • simius, -i (m.) — monkey, ape
  • bellulus, -a, -um — (diminutive of bellus) “cute,” pretty, dapper (often faintly ironic)
  • effigies, -ei (f.) — image, likeness, copy
  • speculum, -i (n.) — mirror (literally “a thing for looking,” from specere)
  • fidelis, -e — faithful, trustworthy — here of the mirror that reports back accurately
  • reddere — to give back, return, render — technical of mirrors and echoes
  • simulacrum, -i (n.) — image, likeness, semblance
  • subamarus, -a, -um — “somewhat bitter” (the prefix sub- softens amarus) — a sour, half-amused laugh
  • iocus, -i (m.) — jest, joke
  • acer, acris, acre — sharp, cutting, biting
  • inficētus, -a, -um — (= infacetus) tasteless, witless, lacking facetia (charm/wit)
  • artifex, -icis (m.) — craftsman, maker, artist
  • industrius, -a, -um — diligent, painstaking
  • heus — an interjection, “Hey there!”, “Listen!”
  • asper, -era, -erum — rough, harsh
  • porro — (adv.) further, then, moreover — here marking the next beat in the action
  • damnare — to condemn

Grammar

qui nesciebat qualis esset — an indirect question (qualis esset, “what sort he was”) governed by nesciebat. The verb of the indirect question is in the subjunctive (esset); imperfect because the main verb nesciebat is past. Standard sequence of tenses.

se putabat bellulum — reflexive accusative + predicate adjective with a verb of thinking. Literally “he was thinking himself (to be) cute.” In Latin this construction does not need an explicit esse.

Ratus simulacrum tale nihil ad se attinere — Ratus is the perfect deponent participle of reor (“think,” “suppose”), governing an accusative-and-infinitive clause: simulacrum (acc., subject) + attinere (inf., “to pertain”). The idiom ad aliquem attinet = “it concerns someone.”

gaudet videndo — videndo is a gerund in the ablative, expressing means: “he rejoices by looking.” Compare English “he delights in seeing.”

Heus, te ignoras? — the reflexive te with ignorare echoes the Delphic gnōthi seauton (“know thyself”); a Roman ear would hear the philosophical commonplace immediately. Latin uses ignorare se where English would say “not know oneself.”

Tua est ipsa haec imago — the word order does the rhetorical work. Predicate adjective Tua up front (“Yours is…”), with ipsa (“the very”) wedged between the demonstrative and its noun — ipsa haec imago, “this very image.” The intensifier presses the point home.

quod prius laudaverat — relative clause with a pluperfect indicative. The indicative is right because the speaker is reporting a fact about the past, not a thought inside the ape’s head: he had praised the mirror, and now condemns the same one.

Gibbs, Laura. Mille Fabulae et Una: 1001 Aesop’s Fables in Latin. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Publishers, 2010. PDF version 1.01 (18 August 2010). Fable 128 (“Simius et Speculum”).