According to Rabelais, kings and fools were born under the same horoscope. Perhaps that explains why we should be born one or the other, as outlined by Erasmus.
One ought to be born a king or a fool.
Aut regem, aut fatuum nasci oportere.
Which would you be? Or which are you, if you already consider yourself to have made the choice? Answers, on a postcard in not more than 20 words of legible rhyme …
Source: Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466-1536), Adages I.i.1 to I.v.100, trans. Margaret M. Phillips, annot. R.A.B. Mynors, in The Collected Works of Erasmus, 86 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974-93), vol. 31, 1.3.1
Image credit: William Wallace Denslow, illustration of Old King Cole (1902)
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