<< Home Page | Perry Index

Perry's Index to the Aesopica

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

THE RAVEN AND THE SNAKE

A raven who was looking for food noticed a snake stretched out asleep in the sun. The raven jumped on the snake and grabbed it, but the snake then twisted back around and bit him. As he was dying, the raven said, 'What a fool I was! The windfall I found has turned out to be fatal!'
This fable can be applied to a man who finds a treasure that puts his life in jeopardy.

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 128: Gibbs (Oxford) 143 [English]
Perry 128: Gibbs (Oxford) 460 [English]
Perry 128: L'Estrange 178 [English]
Perry 128: Townsend 277 [English]
Perry 128: Chambry 135 [Greek]
Perry 128: Chambry 167 [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.