“The reputation of being an animal with difficult behavior and incapable of learning began in ancient Greece”, says Osvaldo Humberto Leonardi Ceschin, from USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences.
Around 600 BC, the donkey was already treated in stories as stubborn, silly and ignorant. In one of Aesop’s fables – oral narratives about animals with human characteristics – the donkey wears a lion’s skin and tries to scare people, until he is caught by the fox in a slip. These stories were later committed to paper and popularized by Phaedrus in the 1st century and by the Frenchman Jean de La Fontaine in the 17th century.
Words associating the donkey with stupidity and ignorance began to appear in the 2nd century: the expression donkey cogitatio (“donkey reasoning” in Latin) was part of the work of Lucius Apuleius, author of The Golden Ass, about a man who turns into an ass. “In the Portuguese language, the term ‘burrico’ appeared in the 12th century”, explains Mário Eduardo Viaro, also from USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences.
CONSULTANCY: Mário Eduardo Viaro and Osvaldo Humberto Leonardi Ceschin, both from the Faculty of Philosophy, Literature and Human Sciences at USP SOURCE https://www.literature.org
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