Emblem 113

Dutch: When the young lords brawl blindly, then the peasants must lose their hair.

High German: When the lords scuffle, then the peasants must lose their hair.

French: The delights of the great are the tears of the small.

High German: What the lords sin, the poor atone for.

Italian: The sin of the lord often makes the vassal weep.

One commits the sin, the other does the penance.

High German: The lords' sin, the peasants' penance.

Latin: Whatever folly the kings commit, the Greeks are punished for it.

Pardon is granted to the ravens, censure harasses the doves.

Greek: Often indeed a whole city suffers because of one evil man. That is:

Often a city pays for the crimes of an evil man.

French: What the sow does wrong, the piglets suffer for.

Dutch: Whatever the big sow does is often atoned for by the piglets.

The little thieves one hangs, the great ones one lets go free.

High German: Many a one must pay for what he never enjoyed.

What are we to do? let us bear it in this case, for just as we endure barrenness or excessive rains or the other evils of nature, so let us endure the extravagance, ambition and greed of those who rule. — Shechem ravished, and the farmer is punished. It is a proverb among the Arabs, according to Drusius, taken from the story of Dinah, daughter of the Patriarch Jacob, Genesis 34. — See Richter, Axiomata oeconomica 24 and 25.

The picture might be a fisherman who with his pole makes the water muddy and drives the fish towards the net; he speaks thus:

Dutch: In troubled water it is good fishing.

In the turmoil there is fat (profit).

Dutch: Ruined masters make rich servants.

Latin: ... and war that is profitable to many.

Aristophanes: In the quarrels of neighbours there is a catch of eels.

Tacitus: Times of change are opportune for great undertakings.

Livy: Many think they can obtain, when the state is in turmoil, those honours which they despair of while the state is at peace.

Petrus Costalius compares soldiers to the stellion (gecko), because that animal lives and thrives in rainy and stormy weather, but dies under a clear sky. Another makes them like the camel, which is said not to drink unless it first stirs the river with its foot and makes the water muddy: whence the device 'the troubled water pleases me'. See Erasmus, in the adage 'To catch an eel', where he cites the verses of Aristophanes in the Knights, which in Latin run thus: For it happens to you as to those who hunt eels: when the marsh stands quiet they bring back no fish; but if on the contrary they stir up the mud, up and down, they catch them; so you yourself catch, when you disturb the commonwealth. This art, says Erasmus, certain princes know well, who understand how to sow discord among cities, so that they may fleece them more freely.

Italian: At the tree that is dry — cut, cut!

When the tree has fallen, everyone runs upon it with the axe.

Poverty makes baseness.

The flies go to lean horses.

The tree having fallen, everyone runs to make firewood.

To a broken ship every wind is contrary.

When a man is on the ground, everyone cries: at him, at him!

The flies settle on the lean horses.

Dutch: Everyone wants to wipe his foot on the poor man.

Where the fence is lowest, everyone wants to cross over.

When the salmon is caught, the eel sucks him dry.

When the dog lies undermost, all the world wants to squeeze him.

When the crows befoul someone, at once the owls befoul him too.

One shortchanges him who fares badly.

The dogs bite the hindmost man.

French: A purse without money I call leather.

To him who suffers mishap, people do further wrong.

French: To him who flees, everything is contrary.

The dish of the lowly is always the first emptied.

Dutch: Where the dyke is lowest the water runs over first.

He who has the upper hand over another seldom bids him good day.

High German: When the wagon goes upright, everyone sits on it; but when it tips over, everyone flees from it.

When the tree falls, everyone gathers up wood.

He who lies there, lies there; no one helps him up.

When the wagon falls, it has five wheels.

Everyone wants to wipe his shoes on poverty.

Where the fence is lowest, there everyone wants to climb over.

When a dog lies undermost, all the dogs bite him.

He who comes down on one knee, people gladly push over; if he then comes down on both, they chop off his head.

Spanish: The dog bites the hindmost.

Dutch: Where one nags at someone, they all nag at him.

Latin: The fodder of tyrants is the common people and the peasants. A saying of Louis XII.

The picture may be an old stiff wolf, on whose back the crows sit, pecking at him; the wolf, unable to turn his stiff neck, tries in vain to drive them away.

When the deep channel shifts, one moves the beacons. — When the wolf grows old, the crows ride him. — See many other sayings fitting this on the preceding leaf.