No. 32 is a curious reminiscence of Simonides:
Once upon a time a cat fell in love with a comely man, and glorious Cypris, the mother of Desire, allowed her to change her shape and take a woman’s body, one so fair that all men desired her. The young man saw her, fell captive in his turn and arranged to wed. The marriage feast was just prepared when a mouse ran by, and the bride, jumping down from the high couch, rushed after it. So the banquet came to an end, and Love, who had had a merry jest, departed too—for even he could not fight against nature.
Once upon a time a middle-aged man—not young, but not yet old, his hair a mixture of black and white—feeling that he still had leisure for love and merriment, took two mistresses, one young, one old. Now the young woman wanted to see in her lover a young man, the old dame desired some one as old as herself. So, every time, the girl plucked out any hairs that she could find turning white, while the old lady did the same to the black hairs, until young and old together at last pulled out all the hair he had and left him bald. _Moral_: Pitiable is the man who falls into the hands of women: they bite and bite until they strip him to the bone.
So in the fable of the lion who falls in love with a maiden, the noble animal strips himself of claws and teeth, and everything that makes him formidable, to please the girl, and for his reward is beaten to death.
In all these stories there is a note of satirical depreciation, but the best example of the cynical humour which inspires the whole class is to be found in the tale of the Ephesian Widow. Phædrus gives a brief version; in Petronius the story is put into the mouth of the satyr-poet Eumolpus, and in a condensed form it will perhaps bear quotation. ‘There was once a matron of Ephesus so notoriously virtuous that all the women of the neighbouring towns used to come and gaze upon her as at a wonderful spectacle.’ So it begins, and the first sentence, which might come from Voltaire’s _Candide_, gives the spirit in which it is written. The lady’s husband died, and not satisfied with the ordinary signs of grief, the bereaved wife insisted on following the corpse to the underground chamber where it was laid. There the lady ‘with singular and exemplary constancy,’ remained with it for five days, deaf to the entreaties of relatives and magistrates, refusing all food, and attended only by one servant-girl whose business it was to share her mistress’ grief and renew the taper which alone lit up the sepulchral chamber.