ABSTRACT
Animal work implies human work, and close bonds could develop between working animals and those who laboured alongside them. Traditional top-down views of domestication present working animals simply as the tools of humans, but examples of animal agency are not difficult to find in antiquity. Apuleius Madaurensis shows us what were thought to be the worst of working conditions, yet even the mill donkeys had their own festival in the Roman calendar, the Vestalia on the ninth of June. It is worth remembering that a working donkey's life could be as long as twenty-five years, and the existence of an annual holiday suggests once again that they were not seen just as 'animate tools', but as participants in working life. Offspring of a mare and a donkey jack, mules mature five years later than both parent animals but have a longer working life of up to twenty years.
