Perry's Index to the Aesopica
Fables exist in many versions; here is one version in English:
THE FROG AND THE OX
A poor man perishes when he tries to imitate rich and powerful
people.
There was once a frog who noticed an ox standing in the meadow. The frog was
seized by a jealous desire to equal the ox in size so she puffed herself up,
inflating her wrinkled skin. She then asked her children if she was now bigger
than the ox. They said that she was not. Once again she filled herself full of
air, straining even harder than before, and asked her children which of the two
of them was bigger. 'The ox is bigger,' said her children. The frog was finally
so indignant that she tried even harder to puff herself up, but her body exploded
and she fell down dead. |
 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.
| In Perry 268, the earthworm
envies the snake and stretches out to equal the snake in length
until it bursts into pieces. In Perry 371,
the same story is told about a lizard trying to equal the length
of a snake. The most famous fable of this type is the Perry
376 the frog who tried to puff herself up until she would be
as large as a bull.
|
Perry 376: Caxton 2.20 [English]
Perry 376: Gibbs (Oxford) 349 [English]
Perry 376: Jacobs 22 [English]
Perry 376: L'Estrange 35 [English]
Perry 376: Townsend 77 [English]
Perry 376: Steinhowel 2.20 [Latin, illustrated] Mannheim
University Library
Perry 376: Babrius 28 [Greek]
Perry 376: Ademar 33 [Latin]
Perry 376: Odo 62 [Latin]
Perry 376: Phaedrus 1.24 [Latin]
Perry 376: Rom. Anglicus 96 [Latin]
Perry 376: Walter of England 40 [Latin]
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.
|
