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

100. THE WOLF AND THE GOAT ON THE CLIFF
Perry 157 (Syntipas 44)

There was a goat grazing up high on a cliff. At the bottom of the cliff there was a wolf who wanted to catch the goat and eat her. Since it was impossible for the wolf to climb up the cliff, he stood down below and said to the goat, 'You poor creature! Why have you left the level plains and meadows in order to graze upon the cliff? Are you trying to tempt death from that height?' The goat said to the wolf in response, 'I know how often I have managed to frustrate you! What makes you think that you can now get me to come down off this cliff so that you can eat me for dinner?'
The fable shows that sometimes people give you advice that is to their advantage but which is dangerous for you.

Note: In another version of this fable (Avianus 26), the goat is besieged by a lion, not a wolf.


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.