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Perry's Index to the Aesopica

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

THE MAN AND THE INSECT

A cicada saw that a man was trying to capture him, so he said, 'Why don't you go and hunt those birds instead? They would actually be useful to you! You don't stand to gain anything by catching me.'
This fable shows that we should not go chasing after things that are useless and unprofitable.

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 387: Gibbs (Oxford) 272 [English]
Perry 387: Aphthonius 9 [Greek]
Perry 387: Syntipas 62 [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.