THE DOG AND THE LION

Perry's Index to the Aesopica

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

THE DOG AND THE LION

A dog was chasing a lion with all his might when the lion turned around and roared at him. The dog abandoned his pursuit, turned tail, and ran. A fox happened to see the dog and said, 'Why on earth would you chase after something when you cannot even stand the sound of its voice?'
It is a foolish man who wants to rival his superiors. He is doomed to fail, and becomes a laughing-stock as well.

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 132: Gibbs (Oxford) 228 [English]
Perry 132: Chambry 187 [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.