<< Home Page | Oxford (Gibbs) Index

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

584. THE BALD MAN AND HIS TWO MISTRESSES
Perry 31 (Phaedrus 2.2)

There are all kinds of stories showing us how women habitually strip a man of his possessions, regardless of whether they are in love with him or he with them.
There was a woman who had a middle-aged man as her lover and although she was no spring chicken herself, she concealed her age with exquisite grace. There was also a beautiful young girl who had caught the man's fancy. Both women wanted to seem a suitable partner for him, so they began plucking out his hair in turn. The man imagined that his looks were being improved by their attentions but in the end he went bald, since the young girl plucked out every one of his gray hairs, while the older woman plucked out all the black ones.

Note: See also the first-century B.C.E. historian Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 33.7. L'Estrange comments: ' 'Tis a much harder Thing to please two Wives, than two Masters; and he's a bold Man that offers at it.'


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.