In this lesson, we will study Aesop’s Fable, “Jupiter and the Camel”.
I. THE FABLE
Read the fable below carefully. Read it aloud if you are able to do so. Then read it a second time, slowly, before you go on to the rest of the lesson. The rest of the lesson will make little sense to you unless the story itself is clear in your mind first.
The Camel once upon a time complained to Jupiter that he was not as well served as he ought to be in the means of defence and offence. “The bull,” said he, “has horns, the boar, tusks, and the lion and tiger, formidable claws and fangs that make them feared and respected on all sides. I, on the other hand, have to put up with the abuse of all who choose to insult me.” Jupiter angrily told him that if he would take the trouble to think, he would see that he was endowed with qualities shared by no other beast; but that, as a punishment for his unreasonable importunity, henceforward his ears should be shortened.
II. LITERAL SENSE
Before we ask what this fable teaches, we must be certain that we see plainly what happens in it. A moral cannot be built on a story the reader has not understood. So let us go through the fable piece by piece.
First, the camel. A camel is a very large animal that lives in hot, dry lands. It is taller than a man. On its back it carries a hump, and that hump is a store of fat. Because the camel carries food inside its own body in this way, it can go for many days without eating and drinking, and still walk on. Its feet are broad and padded underneath, so it does not sink into loose sand as a horse would. Its nostrils can be closed against blowing sand. Its eyes are guarded by long, thick lashes. Its mouth and lips are tough, so that it can eat dry, thorny plants that other animals cannot touch. And a camel can carry a heavy load on its back for a long journey without breaking down. In the lands where Aesop’s fables were first told, the camel was the animal by which men crossed deserts and carried goods from place to place. Without camels, such journeys could not be made at all.
Notice what the camel does not have. It has no horn on its head. It has no long tearing claws. Its teeth are made for grinding plants, not for tearing flesh. A camel can kick, and a camel can bite, but it carries no weapon of the sort that makes other beasts afraid at first sight. That absence is what the camel complains about.
Second, Jupiter. Jupiter was the chief god of the Romans. The Greeks called the same god Zeus. Aesop’s first hearers were pagans, which means that they did not know the true God, and believed instead in many gods. In their stories, Jupiter was the greatest of the gods, the ruler of the sky, and the one who had given the animals their natures. So when the camel has a complaint about the way he was made, it is to Jupiter that he brings it. In the fable, Jupiter stands for the giver, the one who handed out to each beast what it has. We who have the faith know that there is one God, and that He alone made every creature and gave each one its nature. When you read this fable, put the true God in the place where the pagan story puts Jupiter. Then the lesson will stand upright.
Third, the four beasts the camel names, and their weapons. The bull has horns, which are hard, pointed, and set on the front of the head, so that the bull can drive them into an enemy by lowering its head and charging. The boar is a wild pig, and it has tusks, which are long teeth that grow up out of the jaw and stick out past the mouth. A boar slashes with its tusks. The lion and the tiger are great cats that live by hunting and killing other animals. They have claws for seizing and holding, and fangs, which are long, sharp teeth for piercing. The camel names four beasts, and every one of them is armed. He names not one beast that is unarmed, and he says nothing at all about what any of these beasts lack.
Fourth, the words in the fable that are old or unfamiliar. Let us take them one at a time, because the fable turns on some of them.
“Once upon a time” means simply that this happened long ago, at no particular date. It is the ordinary way of beginning a tale.
“Not as well served as he ought to be” means not as well provided for, not as well supplied, as he thinks he deserves. To be served here does not mean to be waited on at table. It means to be furnished with what one needs.
“The means of defence and offence” are the things by which an animal defends itself and the things by which it attacks. Defence is guarding yourself from harm. Offence is going against another to strike him. Horns, tusks, claws, and fangs are used for both.
“Formidable” means causing fear, so terrible that others do not wish to face it. Formidable claws are claws that frighten anyone who sees them.
“Abuse” here means rough and insulting treatment in word or in deed. To “insult” someone is to treat him with scorn, as though he were of no account. The camel says that anyone who wishes may treat him with scorn, and that he must simply put up with it.
“Endowed” means given something as a lasting possession. If you are endowed with a strong voice, the strong voice is yours, given to you and belonging to you. Jupiter says the camel is endowed with qualities, that is, with good properties of his own nature, which no other beast shares.
“Importunity” is the word to hold onto. To be importunate is to press a request again and again, past the proper measure, until the asking itself becomes a burden to the one asked. It is what we mean when we say that a child pesters or nags. Jupiter calls the camel’s importunity “unreasonable,” which means that it was not according to reason, that there was no good sense in it. So the camel did not merely ask once and quietly. He pressed his complaint, and he pressed it without having thought about it.
“Henceforward” means from this time onward, from now on and ever after.
Fifth, the order of events. Let us tell them again from the beginning, and see how each one follows from the one before.
The camel looked at other animals and saw that they were armed. Because he saw that they were armed, and because he had no such arms himself, he judged that he had been badly provided for. Because he judged that he had been badly provided for, he brought a complaint to Jupiter, who had given each animal its nature. Because he complained, and complained repeatedly without thinking, Jupiter became angry. Jupiter’s answer had two parts. First, Jupiter told him that if he would take the trouble to think, he would see that he had been given qualities that no other beast has. Second, Jupiter told him that because his complaining was unreasonable and wearisome, his ears would be shortened from that time onward.
That is where the fable ends. Notice what we are never told. We are never told what the camel’s own qualities are. Jupiter says that the camel has qualities shared by no other beast, and then Jupiter names not one of them. We are also never told what the camel said in reply, or whether he ever came to see his own gifts. The fable stops at the punishment. And notice too that a camel’s ears are in fact small, small for so large a head. Aesop’s hearers had seen camels. The fable ends by pointing at something they could go outside and look at.
One misunderstanding must be corrected here. A child may think that Jupiter punished the camel merely for asking a question, and that this is unjust. But look again at what Jupiter says. He does not say, “You should never have spoken.” He says that the camel would see the truth “if he would take the trouble to think.” The fault Jupiter names is not the asking. The fault is that the camel had never done the work of thinking about his own nature, and yet kept pressing his complaint. And notice what Jupiter does not do. He does not take away the hump, or the padded feet, or the strength to cross a desert. He takes a little from the length of the ears. Every great gift the camel had, the camel still has.
III. MORAL LESSON
The principal lesson of this fable is that we ought to know and be thankful for the gifts we have been given, instead of complaining that we were not given the gifts of somebody else.
The virtue at work here has a name. It is called gratitude. Gratitude is the virtue by which we acknowledge a gift and render thanks to the one who gave it. Let us take that definition apart. A virtue is a good habit of the soul. A habit is a settled readiness to act in a certain way, which is formed in us by doing the same kind of act again and again. So gratitude is a settled readiness to recognize what we have received, and to give thanks for it. Gratitude belongs under the great virtue of justice. Justice is the virtue by which we give to each one what is owed to him. Thanks are owed to a giver. Therefore to withhold thanks is not merely unpleasant. It is a small injustice.
The fault opposite to gratitude is called ingratitude. Ingratitude is the failure to acknowledge a gift and to thank the giver. The camel is ungrateful, but notice carefully how his ingratitude works. He does not say, “I have nothing.” No one told him he had nothing. He simply never looked. He looked at the bull, and at the boar, and at the lion, and at the tiger, and he never once looked at himself. Ingratitude very often begins in this way. It begins not with a lie about our gifts, but with never counting them.
There is a second fault here, close to the first. It is called envy. Envy is sorrow at the good of another. The envious man is not merely sad that he lacks something. He is made unhappy by the fact that his neighbor has it. The camel’s whole speech is a list of what other animals have. Every sentence of it looks outward at another creature’s advantage. That is the shape of envy, and envy is one of those faults that makes a creature miserable without doing him any good at all.
Now let us be careful and just to the camel, because it matters. What the camel wanted was not evil. He wanted not to be abused and insulted. He wanted to be safe from those who chose to injure him. That is a lawful desire. Every creature may rightly wish to be protected from harm, and a man may rightly work to protect himself and those in his care. The fault of the camel is not in what he wanted. The fault is in how he went after it, and in what he ignored while he went after it.
Here we should say plainly how any act of ours is judged. We judge an act by three things. We judge it by what is done. We judge it by why it is done. And we judge it by the circumstances in which it is done, which means the whole situation surrounding the act. The camel’s why is not wicked, for he wishes to be safe. But look at what is done: he brings an accusation against his maker, and he brings it again and again. And look at the circumstances: he is, of all the beasts, the one most richly provided for. He can cross a desert that would kill a lion. He can go without water where a bull would die on the first day. He can eat thorns that a boar would leave alone. He can carry a burden that a tiger could not lift. The complaint is made by the very creature who has the least ground to make it. That is why Jupiter is angry.
Prudence has a part to play here as well. Prudence is the virtue that judges rightly what is to be done. A prudent creature considers what he remembers, and what he sees now, and what is likely to follow. Jupiter puts his finger exactly on the missing piece: “if he would take the trouble to think.” Thinking is trouble. It costs something. It is easier to feel a grievance than to sit down and count what one has been given. The camel took the easy road, and complained without thinking, and reason never got the chance to speak. Our desires and feelings are not evil in themselves. But they are meant to be governed by reason, as a horse is governed by its rider. When feeling gallops off and reason is left standing in the road, we get speeches like the camel’s.
Now let us place the virtue in the middle, between two faults. On one side stands the fault of the camel, which is grasping discontent. The discontented creature is never satisfied, always counting what others have, always complaining of his portion. On the other side stands a different fault, and it is a real one. It is the fault of the sluggish creature who never uses the gifts he has, and never asks for anything, and never lifts a finger to remedy a real need, and calls this laziness by the fine name of contentment. That is not contentment. A camel who lay down in the sand and said, “I shall not walk, for I am content,” would be no better than the camel in the fable. The middle way is this: to know your gifts, to thank the giver for them, to use them fully in the work you are given, and to ask for what you truly need without bitterness and without pestering. That middle way is where virtue lives.
In this fable no character stands in that middle way. Aesop shows us only the fault. So we must picture for ourselves what the good camel would have said. The good camel would have said, “I have no horns and no claws. But I can cross the desert, and no lion can follow me there. Let me thank the one who made me so, and let me go where my strength serves and my weakness does not matter.”
One more thing must be drawn out of this fable. The punishment cannot be undone. The camel’s ears are shortened “henceforward,” from that time onward and forever. He cannot go back and ask that his ears be restored. His complaint has left a mark on every camel that has lived since. Words are like that. A complaint spoken can be forgiven, but it cannot be unheard, and sometimes it changes things that will not change back. A choice that cannot be taken back demands longer thought before it is made. The camel would not take the trouble to think, and the result of not thinking was permanent.
Natural reason alone can see this lesson. Aesop was a pagan and did not have the faith. Yet he could see, and any thinking man can see, that a creature who complains of his own nature while ignoring his own strengths is a fool, and that thanks are owed to a giver. The Church teaches the same truth and carries it further. She teaches that God made each of us, gave us our particular nature, and placed us in our particular station, and that we owe Him worship and thanksgiving for it. She teaches also, in the last of the Ten Commandments, that we must not covet what belongs to our neighbor. And she shows us that our gifts are not given for display but for use, since we shall have to answer for what we did with what we were given. A Christian, then, does not ask, “Why was I not made like him?” A Christian asks, “What was I made for, and what shall I do with what I was given, so as to reach the end of my whole life, which is God?”
IV. AESOP’S CHOICES
Aesop was a teacher, and this little story is the deliberate work of a teacher. Every part of it was chosen. Let us see why each part is fitting.
Why a camel? Because the camel is the animal that has the least reason to complain. If Aesop had chosen a rabbit or a sparrow, we might have felt some sympathy with the complaint, for a rabbit truly is small and weak. But the camel is enormous, tireless, and equipped for a world where the armed beasts would perish. The camel’s gifts are simply of a different kind from horns and claws. They are gifts of endurance rather than gifts of attack, and they are less showy, so they are easier to overlook. Aesop chose the creature whose blessings are great and quiet. That is exactly the kind of blessing men fail to count. And there is one thing more. Anyone who has worked with camels knows that a camel groans and grumbles when it is loaded. Aesop chose the beast that already sounds as though it were complaining.
Why does the camel name the bull, the boar, the lion, and the tiger? Because these four give the plainest possible picture of weapons: horns, tusks, claws, fangs. A child can see all four in his mind at once. And notice that all four of these beasts must fight, either to hunt or to hold their ground. Their weapons belong to their way of life. The camel wants their equipment without their work. He does not say, “I wish to hunt as the lion hunts.” He wants only the respect that the weapons bring. Aesop chose four armed beasts so that we would notice that the camel counted their advantages and never counted his own.
Why is the complaint brought to Jupiter, and not to another animal? Because a complaint about what you are must go to the one who made you. If the camel grumbled to the horse, the horse could do nothing. Only the giver can be told that his gift was too small. By sending the camel to the god, Aesop makes the fault appear in its true size. The camel is not quarreling with his neighbors. He is finding fault with his maker.
Why does Jupiter refuse to list the camel’s qualities? This is Aesop’s finest stroke. Jupiter says only that the camel has qualities shared by no other beast, and then falls silent. He does not say, “You have a hump, and padded feet, and long lashes, and the strength to carry burdens.” Had he said it, the camel would have been given the answer without doing any work, and so would you. The camel was told to take the trouble to think, and by leaving the list out, Aesop makes the reader do the very thinking the camel refused to do. If you found yourself, a moment ago, counting up the camel’s gifts, then the fable has already done its work on you.
Why is the punishment a shortening of the ears? Because it is the exact reverse of what the camel asked. He came asking to be given more, and he was given less. And notice how small the loss is. He is not stripped of his hump or lamed in his feet. He loses a little length of ear. Yet it is permanent, and it is visible, and it is on every camel forever. A small, lasting mark teaches better than a great disaster, because it can be looked at calmly. Aesop’s hearers could stand in a market, look at a camel’s small ears, and remember the whole lesson in one glance.
Why is the fable so short? Because there is nothing here to distract you. There is one grumbling camel, four armed beasts, one angry god, and one pair of shortened ears. You cannot forget so few things. A long story would have given your mind other matters to carry, and the point would have been buried in them.
Now consider why a story is used at all, rather than a bare rule. Aesop could have written, “Be thankful for your own gifts, and do not envy the gifts of others.” That is a true rule. It is also a rule that slides out of the mind almost as soon as it is read. You would nod at it and forget it before supper.
Here is the reason a story works better. All that we know begins in the senses. We learn first by seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling particular things. From the particular things we have taken in through the senses, the mind draws out what is true of many things, and at last what is true always. A child has never seen ingratitude itself, because ingratitude is not a thing you can look at. But he can see a camel standing before a god, pointing at a bull’s horns and a lion’s claws, and never once looking at his own strong back. Once he holds that picture, his mind can travel from the one picture to the general truth about all ingratitude, including his own.
This is not a turning away from the visible world toward some better world. It is the opposite. The fable teaches through the things a child can picture, because picturing is the road by which human understanding travels. Man is made to learn this way. He begins with the camel and the shortened ears, and he ends holding a truth about every gift he will ever receive.
V. APPLICATION
Now let us bring the fable into your own days, because a lesson you cannot use is a lesson you will not keep.
Consider your words first. There will be days when you speak of your family and your home the way the camel spoke of his body. Another boy has a bicycle, and you have none. Your sister was given a thing you were not given. Your friend’s house is larger than your house. The faulty act is to begin listing the horns and the claws, that is, to count out loud everything that others have and you do not. Such a speech makes you unhappy while you are making it, and it wounds your parents, who have given you a great deal. The virtuous act is to do the thing the camel would not do, which is to take the trouble to think. Count first what you have been given. Then, if there is something you truly need, ask for it once, plainly and quietly, and leave it there. Asking once is not importunity. Pressing the same complaint again and again, without ever counting your blessings, is importunity, and it is the very thing that shortened the camel’s ears.
Consider next your work and your promises. In your lessons you will meet someone who does easily the thing you do with labor. He remembers his sums at a glance. He writes a fair hand without trying. He runs faster than you can run. The faulty act is to say, “I was not given what he was given, so there is no use in my working.” That is the camel’s speech turned into an excuse for idleness. The virtuous act is to ask what you were given, and then to spend it. Perhaps you are patient, or steady, or able to keep at a hard task after others have quit. Those are the camel’s gifts rather than the lion’s. They are not showy, and they win no admiration at first sight, but they will carry you across a desert. Your duty is not to have another boy’s gifts. Your duty is to use your own, all the way to the end of the day’s work.
Consider third the things you want and cannot easily have. Sometimes you will want a thing badly, and someone near you will have it, and you will feel a small sourness in you when you look at him holding it. That sourness has a name, and the name is envy, which is sorrow at the good of another. Here is where the fable bites hardest. Envy adds nothing to you. Not one horn ever grew on a camel’s head from his looking at a bull. The camel gained nothing by his complaint and lost a little of his ears. The virtuous act is to stop the counting of another’s goods, and to turn to the counting of your own, and to thank God for them by name, one at a time, out loud if you can. That is not a pretty sentiment. It is a task, and it is the task the camel was told to do and refused.
Now here is why the fable helps you and a bare rule would not. A rule such as “be grateful and do not envy” is easy to nod at and easy to forget, because there is nothing in it for your mind to hold. But a picture stays. You can see the great camel standing there, taller than a man, with his hump and his broad padded feet. You can see him pointing at the bull’s horns and the lion’s fangs. You can see the small ears he has carried ever since.
That picture will come back to you at the moment you need it, and this is exactly what Aesop intended. Someday you will open your mouth to say, “It is not fair, he has this and I have nothing.” And before the rule comes to you, the camel will come to you. You will see him listing the weapons of other beasts while he stands there with the strength to cross a desert, and you will hear Jupiter say, take the trouble to think.
Carry the lesson in one sentence: Count what you were given before you complain of what you were not given.
The sources, goals, method, outline, and direction of this lesson are the work of Mr. William C. Michael, O.P., Headmaster of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. The written copy has been composed from his materials and instructions with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools, and reviewed and approved by him before publication.
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