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

471. THE MAN AND THE HERO
Perry 110 (Chambry 131)

A man kept a hero shrine in his house and made expensive sacrifices to it. Since he was constantly paying out money and spending great sums on the offerings, the god came to him one night and said: 'Look here, stop squandering your wealth: if you spend everything and become poor, you'll put the blame on me!'
Likewise, when people suffer misfortune because of their own foolishness, they often blame the gods.

Note: The spirits of dead heroes were the object of devotional cult in ancient Greece (in The Republic 427b, Plato divides divine worship into three categories: gods, daemons, and heroes, in that order).

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.