Institutio Oratoria

also did not regard the employment of fables as beneath the dignity even of poetry; witness his lines that narrate

What the shrewd fox to the sick lion told.

The Greeks call such fables αἶνοι (tales) and, as I have already [*]( In the preceding section. cp. Arist. Rhet. II. xx. 3 for Libyan stories. ) remarked, Aesopean or Libyan stories, while some Roman writers term them

apologues,

though the name has not found general acceptance.

Similar to these is that class of proverb which may be regarded as an abridged fable and is understood allegorically:

The burden is not mine to carry,

he said,

the ox is carrying panniers.

Simile has a force not unlike that of example, more especially when drawn from things nearly equal without any admixture of metaphor, as in the following case:

Just as those who have been accustomed to receive bribes in the Campus Martius are specially hostile to those whom they suspect of having withheld the money, so in the present case the judges came into court with a strong prejudice against the

v4-6 p.285

accused.

[*](pro Cluent. xxvii. 75. )