Sephardic proverb, asno callado, por sabio contado: "a silent ass is considered wise." An English equivalent is "a fool is not known until he opens his mouth." The story and its variants are alluded to idiomatically in various languages. In Latin it is leonis exuviae super asinum. In Mandarin Chinese it is "羊質虎皮" (pronunciation:yang(2) zhi(4) hu(3) pi(2)), "a goat in a tiger’s skin." In the Chinese story, a goat disguises itself as a lion, but continues to eat grass as usual. When it spies a wolf, instinct takes over and the goat takes to its heels. Later allusions "The Ass in the Lion's Skin" was one of the several Aesop's fables put to use by American political cartoonist Thomas Nast, when it was rumoured in 1874 that Republican president Ulysses S. Grant intended to stand for election for an unprecedented third term in 1876. At the same time, there was a false report that animals had escaped from the Central Park Zoo, and were roaming the streets of New York. Nast combined the two items in a cartoon for the November 7 edition of Harpers Weekly. Titled "Third Term Panic", it depicts a donkey in a lion's skin, labelled "Caesarism", and scattering other animals that stand for various interests. In the twentieth century C.S. Lewis put the fable to use in The Last Battle, the final volume of The Chronicles of Narnia. A donkey named Puzzle is tricked into wearing a lion's skin, and then manipulated so as to deceive the simple-minded into believing that Aslan the lion has returned to Narnia. He then becomes a figurehead for a pseudo-government that works contrary to the interests of the Narnians. Kathryn Lindskoog identifies the Avianus version as the source of this episode. References External links 15th-20th century illustrations from books on Flickr Aesop's Fables La Fontaine's Fables Jataka tales Proverbs Fictional donkeys Animals in Buddhism Indian folklore Indian literature Indian fairy tales