Perry's Index to the Aesopica
Fables exist in many versions; here is one version in English:
THE BULL, THE LION AND THE DINNER INVITATION
There was once a lion who wanted to set a trap for a wild bull. He pretended
to be making a sacrifice to the mother of the gods and asked the bull to come
share the feast. The bull said that he would come, suspecting nothing. But when
he arrived and stood in the lion's door, he looked and saw many bronze cooking
pots filled with boiling water, along with cleavers and knives for skinning,
all newly polished. Yet the bull didn't see anything that could be offered for
sacrifice except a single trussed-up rooster. The bull then turned tail and
ran back to the mountains. Later on the lion happened to run into the lion and
criticized his behaviour. The bull said, 'I came to your house, and here's the
proof that I was there: you had no sacrificial victim on hand that was equal
to the scale of your butcher shop.' |
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 143: Gibbs (Oxford) 99 [English]
Perry 143: L'Estrange 119 [English]
Perry 143: Townsend 214 [English]
Perry 143: Babrius 97 [Greek]
Perry 143: Chambry 211 [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.
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