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

99. THE BULL, THE LION AND THE DINNER INVITATION
Perry 143 (Babrius 97)

There was once a lion who wanted to set a trap for a wild bull. He pretended to be making a sacrifice to the mother of the gods and asked the bull to come share the feast. The bull said that he would come, suspecting nothing. But when he arrived and stood in the lion's door, he looked and saw many bronze cooking pots filled with boiling water, along with cleavers and knives for skinning, all newly polished. Yet the bull didn't see anything that could be offered for sacrifice except a single trussed-up rooster. The bull then turned tail and ran back to the mountains. Later on the lion happened to run into the bull and criticized his behaviour. The bull said, 'I came to your house, and here's the proof that I was there: you had no sacrificial victim on hand that was equal to the scale of your butcher shop.'


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.