Perry's Index to the Aesopica
Fables exist in many versions; here is one version in English:
THE WOMAN IN LABOUR
No one gladly revisits a place where he got hurt.
After her months of pregnancy had passed, a woman about to deliver her child
was lying on the ground, moaning and weeping. Her husband urged her to rest her
body on the bed, so that she might better relieve herself of nature's burden,
but the woman refused and said, 'I hardly think that my trouble could come to
an end in the very place where it was first conceived!' |
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 479: Gibbs (Oxford) 538 [English]
Perry 479: Phaedrus 1.18 [Latin]
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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