Meaning & Analysis
Even a humble and lowly ass, when burdened with gold, can ascend to the top of a fortified castle—an otherwise inaccessible place.
Insights
Power of Wealth
This proverb underscores the persuasive and penetrating power of money. Wealth can overcome resistance, breach defenses, and achieve what strength or merit alone cannot.
Corruption and Bribery
Suggests that even the most secure institutions—represented by the castle—are vulnerable to bribery. Gold, not valor or wisdom, is the true key to access and influence.
Undeserved Advancement
The humble ass symbolizes the unworthy or incompetent who, with enough money, can attain high positions or privileges typically reserved for the deserving.
Historical Attribution
Often attributed to Philip of Macedon, the phrase reflects ancient political wisdom: that bribery can achieve what siege engines cannot. It was a cynical but realistic view of power dynamics in both warfare and governance.
Economic Commentary
The proverb critiques the way material wealth can manipulate justice, politics, and social mobility, revealing a deep skepticism about integrity in human institutions.
Cross-Cultural Parallels
This sentiment appears in many cultures—e.g., 'A silver key can open an iron lock' or 'Money will do anything'—suggesting a nearly universal recognition of wealth's distorting influence on fairness and merit.
Psychological Complicity
The saying implicates not just the wealthy but also the gatekeepers who allow gold to override principle, suggesting that greed or fear compromises integrity across the board.
Rhetorical Devices
Irony
The image of an ass—symbol of ignorance and powerlessness—reaching a castle's pinnacle through gold is a biting irony, emphasizing how wealth subverts natural order or merit.
Symbolism
The ass symbolizes foolishness or baseness; the gold represents corrupting power; the castle stands for status, power, or virtue—together forming a potent metaphor for systemic corruption.
Hyperbole
The exaggerated image of an ass climbing a fortified stronghold dramatizes the absurd yet effective influence of wealth, making the moral lesson stark and memorable.
Transcription
Quotations
When he had prefixed and appoynted to take a certain castle and fortresse beeyng veraye strong and well fensed, and his spyes had brought woorde again, to bee a thyng out of peraduentures hard to dooe, yea and (the south to saye) vttherly vnpossible: he demaunded whether it wer of suche hardnesse and dificulttee, that it were not possible for an asse beeyng heauie loden with gold to haue accesse and entreaunce or passage vnto it.
There is no place inuincible, wherein an asse laden with gold, may not enter.
There was no Citty so strong, whereinto an asse laden with golde could not enter.
You must be the ass charged with crowns to make way to the fort, and I the conqueror to follow, and seize it.
There is no earthly gate, which an asse laden with golde cannot enter into.
The usuall proverbe is An asse laden with gold, will go lightly up hill: and that Gifts doe enter stone-wals and Serue God, and work hard.
Philip was wont to say, that an asse laden with golde, would enter the gates of any Citie.
There is not any place so high, whereunto an Asse laden with gold will not get up.
There’s no fence or fortress against an Ass laden with Gold.
There is no earthly gate that an Ass laden with money cannot enter.
(An Ass loaded with and a Castle).
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.