5
Thereupon Aesop said, I would have you know, my friend, that the modern flute-makers have given up the use of bones from fawns, and use bones from asses, asserting that the latter have a better sound. This fact underlies the riddle Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. ii. p. 440, Cleobulina, No. 3. The restoration of Bernardakis here adopted is found in the editio minor. which Cleobulina made in regard to the Phrygian flute: Full on my ear with a horn-bearing shin did a dead donkey smite me. So we may well be astonished that the ass, which otherwise is most gross and unmelodious, yet provides us with a bone which is most fine and melodious.
5
That, without question, said Neiloxenus, is the reason for the complaint which the people of Busiris make against us of Naucratis; for we are already using asses’ bones for our flutes. But for them even to hear a trumpet is a sin, because they think it sounds like the bray of an ass; and you know, of course, that an ass is treated with contumely by the Egyptians on account of Typhon. The Egyptian god Set presumably, a malignant deity, who was sometimes represented with features of an ass. Cf. for example, O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, pp. 102 and 409. Cf. also Plutarch, Moralia, 362 F, where the present statements are slightly expanded.
