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Perry's Index to the Aesopica

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

THE ROOSTER AND THE THIEVES

Thieves broke into a certain house and didn't find anything inside except a rooster. The thieves grabbed the rooster and made their escape. Later, when they were ready to kill him, the rooster begged the thieves to let him go, claiming that he was useful to people because he woke them to go about their tasks in the dark. The thieves said, 'All the more reason to kill you: when you wake them up, you prevent us from robbing their houses!'
The story shows it is precisely the things that frustrate wicked people which are beneficial to honest folk.

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 122: Gibbs (Oxford) 122 [English]
Perry 122: L'Estrange 177 [English]
Perry 122: Townsend 291 [English]
Perry 122: Chambry 158 [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.