Perry's Index to the Aesopica
Fables exist in many versions; here is one version in English:
THE MURDERER AND THE MULBERRY TREE
A robber had murdered someone along the road. When the bystanders began to chase
him, he dropped the bloody corpse and ran away. Some travellers coming from
the opposite direction asked the man how he had stained his hands. The man said
that he had just climbed down from a mulberry tree, but as he was speaking,
his pursuers caught up with him. They seized the murderer and crucified him
on a mulberry tree. The tree said to him, 'It does not trouble me at all to
assist in your execution, since you tried to smear me with the murder that you
yourself committed!'
If often happens that even honest people do not hesitate to persecute someone
who has slandered them. |
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 152: Gibbs (Oxford) 167 [English]
Perry 152: Chambry 214 [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.
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