Written around 170 AD, when Emperor Marcus Aurelius ruled the Roman Empire, 'The Golden Ass' is a first-person narrative told by Lucius Apuleius, where he is turned into a donkey. In that guise, Lucius describes, from the animal's viewpoint, the life of a lowly working animal in Roman times and the various forms of mistreatment inflicted on the donkey. We have to jump forward 17 centuries before we find, in Anna Sewell's 'Black Beauty', a comparably vivid and empathetic presentation of the life of an animal mistreated by humans. But what can we learn from this Roman work about moral progress since it was written? How much moral progress have we made over the past two millennia?
PETER SINGER: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress,” Mahatma Gandhi said, “can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” If we apply that test to the world as a whole, how much moral progress have we made over the past two millennia?
How much moral progress have we made over the past two millennia? That question is suggested by “The Golden Ass”, arguably the world’s earliest surviving novel, written around 170 AD, when Emperor Marcus Aurelius ruled the Roman Empire…
“The Golden Ass” is a first-person narrative told by Lucius Apuleius, whose interest in magic takes him to Thessaly, a province of Greece renowned for the ability of its sorcerers. But his quest to learn the dark arts ends badly when he is turned into a donkey. In that guise, Lucius describes, from the animal’s viewpoint, the life of a lowly working animal in Roman times.
The various forms of mistreatment inflicted on the donkey fall into three categories. There is sadism: a slave boy for whom he carries wood gathered from the mountainside loves to torment him by beating him with clubs, adding rocks to make his load even heavier, tying stinging thorns to his tail, and finally, when he has a load of dry kindling on his back, dropping a live coal into it and igniting an inferno from which the donkey barely escapes with his life.
There is also brutality: he falls into the hands of a band of robbers who beat him mercilessly, not because they enjoy making him suffer, but to compel him to carry their stolen silver up endless rough and steep mountain paths to their hideout.
Finally, there is exploitation, ruthless but economically rational for the donkey’s new owner, a miller. In the mill, 24 hours a day, donkeys and horses turn the wheel that grinds the grain into flour. They are released from their exhausting labour only long enough to eat and sleep so that they will live to work another day. Overseeing their work, and beating them if they slacken off, are similarly exploited human slaves, clad in rags, with tattooed foreheads and shackled feet.
All of this makes “The Golden Ass” a remarkably progressive text. We have to jump forward 17 centuries before we find, in Anna Sewell’s “Black Beauty”, a comparably vivid and empathetic presentation of the life of an animal mistreated by humans. But what can we learn from this Roman work about moral progress since it was written?
In many countries, the sadistic cruelty of the slave boy and the brutality of the bandits would be illegal. That is progress, but it is far from universal. If Apuleius were to return today to the area where he was born, he would not find laws to protect animals from cruelty. Across North Africa, only Egypt has such legislation. In West and central Africa, animals are protected by law only in Ghana and Nigeria… Typically, these laws prohibit both sadistic cruelty and brutal beatings, although there is wide variation in enforcement…
Consider developed countries, where the exploitation of animals for commercial purposes is a far larger problem. Worldwide, more than 70 billion land-based vertebrates are killed for food each year, and 90 per cent of them live their entire lives inside factory farms. Although a few jurisdictions, especially the European Union, do prohibit the most extreme forms of confinement, in most of the world there are no barriers to treating animals in whatever manner maximises profit…
Gandhi’s criterion for judging the greatness of a nation and its moral progress is not limited to maltreatment of animals that is sadistic or brutal. It refers only to the way that the nation’s animals are treated. By that standard, as long as we keep most of the animals whose lives we control from birth to death in such appalling conditions, we cannot claim to have made much moral progress since Apuleius’s time. SOURCE…
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