The Dog and the Wolf thy maintenance and thy fodder and let me not see thy riding"." Since the onager is an Asian animal, it suggests that this region may have been the origin of the alternative fable recorded as 183 in the Perry Index. In this the wild ass at first congratulates a grazing pack-animal's sleek condition but eventually is grateful for his own freedom after seeing the other being driven along beneath a load. A later 'Christianised' version is now numbered as the independent fable 411 in the Perry Index. There the onager jeers at a donkey, only to be eaten by a
Onager (weapon) could be winched back again. The onagers of the Roman Empire were mainly used for besieging forts or settlements. They would often be armed with large stones that could be covered with a combustible substance and set alight. The onager was used from the 4th century AD until the 6th century AD. The late-fourth century author Ammianus Marcellinus describes 'onager' as a neologism for scorpions and relates various incidents in which the engines fire both rocks and arrow-shaped missiles. The late-fourth or early-fifth century military writer Vegetius stipulates that a legion ought to field ten onagers, one for each cohort.