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Perry's Index to the Aesopica

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

THE PINE TREE AND THE WEDGES

Some woodcutters splitting a wild pine tree drove wedges into the trunk, prying it apart and thus making their work easier. The pine tree groaned and said, 'I cannot blame the axe, who had no connection with my root, but these utterly despicable wedges are my own children. Pounded into me this way and that, they are going to tear me apart!'
This fable reminds everyone that the bad things that strangers do to you are never as terrible as the things done to you by the members of your own family.

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 303: Gibbs (Oxford) 42 [English]
Perry 303: L'Estrange 47 [English]
Perry 303: Townsend 162 [English]
Perry 303: Babrius 38 [Greek]
Perry 303: Chambry 100 [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.