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Perry's Index to the Aesopica

Fables exist in many versions; here is one version in English:

THE VEGETABLES AND THE WEEDS

Somebody saw a gardener irrigating his vegetables and said to him, 'How is it that wild plants, without having been planted and without having been cultivated, spring up each season, while the plants that you yourself plant in the garden frequently wither from lack of water?' The gardener replied, 'The wild plants are cared for by divine providence, which is sufficient in and of itself, while our own plants must depend for their care on human hands.'
This story shows that a mother's nurturing is stronger than a stepmother's attentions.

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.


Perry 119: Gibbs (Oxford) 501 [English]
Perry 119: Chambry 154 [Greek]
Perry 119: Syntipas 32 [Greek]


You can find a compilation of Perry's index to the Aesopica in the gigantic appendix to his edition of Babrius and Phaedrus for the Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1965). This book is an absolute must for anyone interested in the Aesopic fable tradition. Invaluable.