C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
The Woman and her Maid-Servants
By Babrius (c. Second Century A.D.)
Translation of James Davies
A
Kept maids at home, and these, ere break of day,
She used to raise as early as cock-crow.
They thought ’twas hard to be awakened so,
And o’er wool-spinning be at work so long;
Hence grew within them all a purpose strong
To kill the house-cock, whom they thought to blame
For all their wrongs. But no advantage came;
Worse treatment than the former them befell:
For when the hour their mistress could not tell
At which by night the cock was wont to crow,
She roused them earlier, to their work to go.
A harder lot the wretched maids endured.