<< Home Page | Perry Index

Perry's Index to the Aesopica

Fables exist in many versions; here is one version in English:

THE LARK IN THE SNARE

A lark fell into a snare and sang a lament, 'Woe is me, wretched and unlucky bird that I am! I have brought about my own demise not for gold or silver or some object of value, but merely for a tiny bit of food.'
The story shows that people are willing to risk their lives for the sake of some petty profit.

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 251: Gibbs (Oxford) 428 [English]
Perry 251: L'Estrange 143 [English]
Perry 251: Chambry 169 [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.