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

539. THE BOY AND THE TRIPE
Perry 47 (Babrius 34)

A crowd of country folk had sacrificed a bull to the goddess Demeter, scattering leaves over the wide threshing-floor, while the tables were covered with platters of meat and jars brimming with wine. There was a boy who ate greedily and stuffed himself full with beef tripe. On the way home, he was seized by a stomach ache. Collapsing into his mother's tender embrace, he vomited, and said, 'Woe is me, I'm going to die! Mother, all my guts are falling out!' The mother replied, 'Be brave and throw it all up; don't hold anything back. Those are not your own guts you are vomiting: they are the bull's!'

Note: An epimythium probably added by a later editor reads: 'This fable might be applied to someone who has squandered the property of an orphan and then weeps and wails when he has to pay it back.' Alciato, Emblems 129, tells the same story not about human beings, but about a kite and his mother.

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.