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Perry's Index to the Aesopica

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

THE SPARROW AND THE MYRTLE BERRIES

A sparrow was feeding on some myrtle berries. The berries were so sweet that the sparrow stayed right there in the tree and refused to leave. Meanwhile, a bird catcher who had been watching the sparrow caught her and killed her. As the sparrow was about to take her last breath, she exclaimed, 'What a miserable creature I am! I am going to die merely for the sake of some food and its momentary sweetness.'
This fable shows that some people, out of their desire for good food and luxury, put their lives at risk in the same way as wicked people do.

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 86: Gibbs (Oxford) 426 [English]
Perry 86: L'Estrange 55 [English]
Perry 86: Townsend 310 [English]
Perry 86: Chambry 157 [Greek]
Perry 86: Syntipas 58 [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.