Perry's Index to the Aesopica
Fables exist in many versions; here is one version in English:
THE PARTRIDGE AND THE ROOSTERS
A man who kept roosters also bought himself a partridge and let it loose to
live among his other birds. When the roosters pecked at the partridge and chased
him away, the partridge became very dejected, thinking that the roosters were
attacking him because he was an outsider. After a little while, however, the
partridge saw the roosters fighting and attacking one another. The partridge
then put aside his grief and said, 'Well, I am certainly not going to grieve
over this any longer, now that I see the way they fight with one another.
The story shows that a wise person readily tolerates the insolence of strangers
when he sees those same strangers mistreating one another. |
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 23: Gibbs (Oxford) 134 [English]
Perry 23: L'Estrange 84 [English]
Perry 23: Townsend 234 [English]
Perry 23: Chambry 21 [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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