<< Home Page | Oxford (Gibbs) Index

Aesop's Fables, translated by Laura Gibbs (2002)

536. OPPORTUNITY
Perry 530 (Phaedrus 5.8)

Running swiftly, balancing on the razor's edge, bald but with a lock of hair on his forehead, he wears no clothes; if you grasp him from the front, you might be able to hold him, but once he has moved on not even Jupiter himself can pull him back: this is a symbol of Opportunity, the brief moment in which things are possible.
Men of old invented this particular image of Time so that our efforts would not be undermined by laziness or hesitation.

Note: This fable is based on a famous statue of Kairos, 'Opportunity,' by Lysippus, a famous Greek sculptor of the fourth century B.C.E. (the statue is described in Posidippus, Anthologia Planudea 275 and Ausonius, Epigrams 11).

Source: Aesop's Fables. A new translation by Laura Gibbs. Oxford University Press (World's Classics): Oxford, 2002.
NOTE: New cover, with new ISBN, published in 2008; contents of book unchanged.