A Boy at a celebration gets greedy on Bull entrails. Gets sick. Learns lesson.
What is taken in greed will one day cause pain, for it was never truly ours.
Babrius Translation (The Boy Eating The Entrails)
What time with vineboughs men the broad-floor strew,
A bull to Ceres once the rustics slew.
Tables of meat and casks of wine were there;
But one poor lad had gorged too large a share
Of the bull’s entrails. Swoln he homeward hies,
And sore bewails his stomach’s weight and size.
Once in his mother’s arms, “Alas!” cried he.
“What is’t?” she said. “Oh, all is o’er with me!
“My wretched fate is present death, no doubt;
“For, mother, see, my bowels gushing out.”
“Don’t try to keep it down!” the dame replied;
“’Tis not your own, dear! but the bull’s, inside!”
So when an orphan’s substance guardians spend,
And retribution comes to faithless friend,
To such, deep-groaning at disgorging hour,
Methinks this fable one might quote with power.
How do you think an AI might simplify this fable? Here is one answer, and the illustration above was made from this simplification:
The Greedy Boy and the Bull
At harvest time the villagers held a grand feast. They roasted a fine bull to thank Ceres for the crops, and platters of meat filled the tables. A young boy, dazzled by the feast, stuffed himself with far too much of the bull’s entrails. On the walk home his belly ached and swelled. Clutching his stomach, he ran to his mother and cried, “Mother, my insides are spilling out!” She hugged him and smiled kindly. “Those aren’t your insides, my son,” she said. “They’re the bull’s. You ate more than belonged to you.”
Moral
What is taken in greed will one day cause pain, for it was never truly ours.
Perry. #047