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Perry's Index to the Aesopica

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

THE FISHERMAN AND THE OCTOPUS

When a fisherman happened to see an octopus during the winter, he said, 'If I take off my clothes and jump in after him, I will freeze! But if I do not catch that octopus, I condemn my children to die of starvation!'

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 425: Gibbs (Oxford) 545 [English]


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.