Perry's Index to the Aesopica
Fables exist in many versions; here is one version in English:
THE SHEPHERD, THE DOG AND THE SICK SHEEP
A shepherd had a whelp that he fed on dead or dying sheep. One day he saw this
dog standing near a sick lamb, looking sad and seeming to weep. The shepherd
urged him to put a stop to this ostentation. 'You put on a fine show of sympathy!'
he said to the dog. 'But let's hope instead that what you want is not going
to happen after all.'
The fable shows that in the same way every heir to property pretends to
sympathize with the sick man by making a hollow show of weeping. |
 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 206: Gibbs (Oxford) 381 [English]
Perry 206: Chambry 312 [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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