Perry's Index to the Aesopica
Fables exist in many versions; here is one version in English:
THE DONKEY AND THE MULE
A donkey and a mule were walking along together. When the donkey saw that they
were carrying equal loads, he got angry and complained that the mule was awarded
a double portion of food even though she carried a load that was no bigger than
his own. After they had journeyed a little further down the road, the driver
saw that the donkey could not hold up under the weight, so he took part of the
donkey's load and placed it on the mule. Later, when the driver saw that the
donkey had grown even more tired, he again transferred some of the donkey's
load to the mule, and so on. Finally the driver took the entire load and shifted
it from the donkey to the mule. At that point the mule glanced over at the donkey
and said, 'What do you say now: don't I deserve a double portion of food?'
It is the same when we pass judgment on one another's situations: instead
of looking at how things start, we should look instead at how they turn out
in the end. |
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 263: Gibbs (Oxford) 64 [English]
Perry 263: Chambry 272 [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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