Ἀπ' ὄνου καταπεσών

A proverb [deriving] from those who attempt horsemanship when they are not even able to handle donkeys. Aristophanes in Clouds [writes]: "why, pray, are you talking nonsense, as if you had fallen from a donkey?"¹ But the philosopher Plato says the proverb with "the mind" taking the place of the animal, like so: "[I should not], as if my mouth were unbridled, be forcefully carried away by the argument and, as the proverb has it, fall from a mind".²