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Aesop's Fables, translated by Laura Gibbs (2002)

239. THE EAGLE AND THE TORTOISE
Perry (Achaeus)

So the swift was undone by the weaker, just as the eagle was undone by the tortoise.

Note: Like the lions rebuking the hares (see Fable 21), this is not a complete fable but only an allusion to a fable preserved in a fragment of Achaeus, a Greek playwright of the fifth century B.C.E. None of the traditional collections of Aesopica include this allusion to a fable, although it is listed as a fable by van Dijk (15A1). Without a full account of the fable, we will never know just how the tortoise got the better of the eagle, although the reference to the eagle's swiftness suggests the possibility of some sort of race.


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.