<< Home Page | Perry Index

Perry's Index to the Aesopica

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

THE BLIND MAN AND THE CUB

There was a blind man who was in the habit of identifying any animal that was placed in his hands by touching it. Once they gave him a wolf cub. Even after stroking the animal he was not sure of its identity, so he said, 'I am not sure whether it is the cub of a wolf or a fox or some similar creature, but I do know that this is not the kind of animal that should accompany a flock of sheep!'
In the same way bad people are revealed by their features.

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 37: Gibbs (Oxford) 37 [English]
Perry 37: Townsend 225 [English]
Perry 37: Chambry 54 [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.